If and when a reckless driver runs a light and hits a pedestrian, the first question on cops’ and prosecutors’ minds isn’t whether they did so in a sedan or an SUV. The problem is the act, not the instrument, which is a sensible way for our laws to work. Yet for more than 35 years, for reasons that have little to do with public safety and fairness, people convicted of possession of crack cocaine have faced astronomically harsher penalties than those nabbed with the chemically indistinguishable powder cocaine.
This inconsistent treatment springs from unreasoning fear if not downright racism, rooted as it was in the fact that crack was seen as the drug of choice for Black people in urban areas at a time when violent crime was rising. Those convicted of crack cocaine trafficking are overwhelmingly Black.
In the awakening of recent years, lawmakers and law enforcement — their eyes often opened by an opioid epidemic in which addicts, mostly white, are generally seen as victims worthy of sympathy — have come to see the short-sightedness of a hyper-punitive war on drugs. Sentencing guidelines have been reformed, diversion and harm-reduction programs introduced, convictions reexamined and marijuana legalized. Yet to this day we’ve maintained the shameful crack-powder disparity. In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which only reduced the disparity from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1, rather than eliminating it.
Now, Ohio Republican Rob Portman and New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker, senators who often fall along very different lines politically, aim to finally end the inequality. Their legislation would not only make a massive difference for those who might be convicted of crack possession in the future but the thousands of predominantly men of color who have been convicted in the past and are languishing in prison serving much longer sentences than those convicted of fundamentally identical crimes.
They have overpaid their debt to society, and more than deserve a chance to experience life in freedom. Let’s rectify this without delay.
