Today President Barack Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduces the powder/crack cocaine sentencing disparity from 100:1 to 18:1. There is no scientific or medical explanation whatsoever for retaining any disparity; it's simply the result of a Washington ritual that holds that all bipartisan compromises must necessarily make legislation worse. More than 80 percent of those convicted on the harsher offenses related to crack are black, despite the fact that most crack cocaine users are white. The bill is not retroactive, so those individuals sentenced under the draconian former guidelines will see no relief. Last week, in response to my rather glum response acknowledging Congress' small but important step toward sentencing sanity, David Dayen accurately pointed out that "you know what we don’t do a lot of in this country? Reduce sentences...ANY change in a positive direction takes a ridiculous amount of work and struggle. This is a small step, but it’s a step in the right direction." All very true.
The problem is that, the Fair Sentencing Act aside, Congress doesn't seem to have learned much about passing draconian criminal penalties in the throes of hysteria. As Michael Whitney reported last week, the Senate moved to stop the candy-flavored narcotic menace by passing Sen. Diane Feinstein's proposal to double the ordinary penalty for drug possession for someone who "knowingly or intentionally manufacture[s] or create[s], with intent to manufacture, create, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance," that is "combined with a candy product," "marketed or packaged to appear similar to a candy product," or "modified by flavoring or coloring the controlled substance with the intent to distribute, dispense, or sell the controlled substance to a person under 18 years of age." Aside from the obvious effect it would have on pot-brownie lovers and their associated criminal activities (such as loitering, leaving pizza boxes and Mountain Dew bottles unattended) Feinstein expressed concern over the selling of "candy-flavored meth" to children.
I suppose the one thing we can be thankful for is that such a law probably won't have the same drastic racial impact as the crack/powder disparity, but the wealthy parents of potheads might want to think about an equal protection challenge. Feinstein's proposal is likely driven by local politics and California's Prop. 19 referendum, but that doesn't fully explain its broad approval in the Senate. If the absurdity of marijuana prohibition, let alone pot brownie prohibition, hasn't reached the halls of a Democratic-controlled Congress, then it's highly unlikely any basic understanding of the folly of the War on Drugs has either.
Given the rising cost of corrections and the fact that the U.S. imprisons more of its population than any country in the world, there's no reason for Congress to be increasing criminal penalties for nonviolent drug abuse. The underlying message that should have driven altering the crack/powder disparity, that the U.S. imprisons too many people who don't need to be imprisoned for far too long, clearly hasn't set in. Congress is still dumb on crime.
(Flickr/olya)
