'Crack' Apology Should Reopen Needed Debate
Rhonda B. Graham, Opinion

             Nearly 500 students were in my high school class on graduation day.

Rather than a sea of maroon and gray tassels, just over a decade later my kid brother's graduating class resembled a small tributary flooded with girls, outnumbering the boys nearly 2-to-1. "Where are the boys?" I wondered. The five-letter response was crack, the "rock" form of powder cocaine.

           This was three years after passage of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. It set harsher penalties for crack possession than for powder cocaine, because as Sen. Joseph R. Biden admitted on Capital Hill Tuesday, he -- and other liberals and conservatives -- got spooked by the rise in deadly violence and addictions seeping beyond urban America into rural and suburban communities. Four years after the Act's passage, treacherous crack drug kingpins were subjects of new film and literary genres.

          As the senator confessed, Congress' rationale was based on now disproven "myth" such as crack being instantly addictive and more harmful to unborn children than other drugs. At least Biden offers a somewhat reasonable mea culpa. It takes 100 times more powder cocaine than crack to trigger the five- and 10-year mandatory minimum sentences under federal law. He's proposing to eliminate the disparity for simple possession and authorizing funds for prison- and jail-based drug treatment programs.

          But other realities are behind this much-appreciated confession: The myth that everyone in possession of an illegal substance is deserving of mandatory sentencing.

"I'm not convinced that any disparity in the sentencing of crack and powder defendants is justified given what we know now," Biden said. But, it's not enough that members of Congress are thinking twice. As long as there are federal prosecutors like Gretchen Shappert of the Western District of North Carolina assigned to these cases, the fundamental unfairness of these laws will find support.

Shappert believes higher penalties for crack are justified because greater violence is associated with it at the local level. "Whereas cocaine powder destroys an individual, crack cocaine destroys a community," she said. Yes, crackheads will sell their child for a piece of "rock." But the federal prosecutor's attempt to ignore the "chicken or egg" aspect of this futile public policy is scary.

          As long as cocaine powder exists so will the ability to make more addictive and deadly mutations for profit. By protecting the source of the deadly crack - powder cocaine -- from the toughest penalty you become a partner in its distribution in other forms.

        What also destroys whole communities are inadequate laws that give judges no discretion to determine which defendant would save society more money if he went through a qualified drug treatment program versus off to prison for five years of training as the next thug-in-the-making.