Ending Racist Sentencing Disparity

IT’S ALL IN CRACK AND WHITE –

June 24, 2021 – The Biden administration has again voiced support for ending a law that punishes possession or distribution of crack cocaine far more severely than for powder forms of the drug. “The current disparity is not based on evidence,” acting ONDCP Director Regina Labelle told Congress on June 22. “It has caused significant harm for decades, particularly for individuals, families and communities of color.”

Biden himself played a key role in establishing this disparity in the 1980s, during his time as a US Senator. In the decades since, it has resulted in federal courts overwhelmingly imposing draconian sentences on Black Americans for crack convictions—despite the fact that most crack users are white. Cocaine, a stimulant that can be snorted, smoked or injected, is derived from the coca leaf, through a chemical process that produces a powder salt form of the drug. “Crack” cocaine became increasingly popular in the US in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s. It is made by cooking power cocaine with baking soda and breaking it apart to get “rocks” that can be smoked. Sold in smaller quantities than powder cocaine, it could be more cheaply accessible, helping crack to become widely available in the 1980s. It never made sense. But Biden and other politicians argued in the 1980s that this was necessary because crack was uniquely dangerous and addictive. In fact, crack and powder cocaine have no pharmacological differences; the effects are almost identical, expect that the mode of ingestion for crack (smoking) tends to give a faster-acting, shorter-lasting high.

Of course, politics doesn’t need to follow science—just the fears of voters. Thus, this 100:1 sentencing disparity remained in law for 24 years. It was reformed in 2010 when President Barack Obama signed into law the Fair Sentencing Act; the bill reduced the disparity, but still left it at 18:1.

Years later, in 2018, the First Step Act, signed by President Donald Trump, made that reform retroactive—meaning that anyone convicted for crack before 2010 could now ask for a sentence reduction. But the 18:1 disparity remained.