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Left Coast Kratom Shop: Kratom Powder For Sale

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InvisibleBridgeburner
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For equal treatment under the law
    #7661800 - 11/21/07 07:41 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/story/315671.html

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is taking welcome steps toward ending an unjust disparity in federal sentences for cocaine-related crimes. For two decades, people convicted of possessing or selling crack cocaine have been treated to much harsher penalties than those involved with powder cocaine. Under federal law, it takes 100 times as much powder cocaine as crack to draw stiff five- and 10-year mandatory prison terms.

Target drug kingpins

Even if the commission does all it can, it would not be enough to eliminate the injustice that has disproportionately imprisoned crack-cocaine offenders. Only Congress can fix what it broke when it set badly skewed mandatory-minimum prison sentences based on misinformation.

This is about fair punishment, not about being soft on crime. People who buy or sell illegal drugs must answer to the law. But that law should also be consistent among offenders and proportionate to the crime.

More than 20 years after crack invaded inner cities and alarmed the public, research has shown that crack is no more addictive, and perhaps less so, than powder cocaine. Meanwhile, countless tax dollars have been spent filling prison beds with low-level crack offenders instead of targeting kingpin drug traffickers.

The Sentencing Commission helped to lessen the unequal punishment by setting more lenient sentences for crack-cocaine offenses as of Nov. 1. Now the commission is leaning toward applying the new crack guidelines retroactively. We urge it to do so.

When the commission previously reduced sentences for LSD, marijuana and Percodan, a painkiller, it made those changes retroactive. The new guidelines acknowledge that the old crack sentences are disproportionately tough. Fairness demands that people serving those sentences be given a chance for relief, too.

The new guidelines should be applied to the 19,500 crack offenders -- about 86 percent of them black -- now in federal prison. Not all of them would be released at once. Each would have to petition a judge for sentence reductions that average two years. This isn't much time off, considering the Draconian sentences that many are serving.

Rebalance justice

Congress, too, should act to end the sentencing disparities. In 1988 Congress approved mandatory-minimum sentences for simple possession of crack, the only drug so punished. Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., and Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., who supported tough-on-crack sentences, now are leading the push for reform. They have filed two of the five bills that would reduce the chasm between crack- and powder-cocaine sentences.

The bill, S 1711, would erase the sentencing disparities altogether, increase penalties for traffickers and pay for treatment programs in prisons. The bill would address unfairness in cocaine laws and rebalance the scales of justice.


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Offlinewortiesbo
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Registered: 03/18/06
Posts: 866
Loc: new vegas
Last seen: 6 years, 9 days
Re: For equal treatment under the law [Re: Bridgeburner]
    #7661989 - 11/21/07 09:02 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

still not enough... people shouldnt have to go to jail for what they choose to put in their bodies...


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InvisibleNeon
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Registered: 01/04/05
Posts: 497
Re: For equal treatment under the law [Re: Bridgeburner]
    #7662103 - 11/21/07 09:49 AM (16 years, 2 months ago)

Quote:

More than 20 years after crack invaded inner cities and alarmed the public, research has shown that crack is no more addictive, and perhaps less so, than powder cocaine.




I would like to see that research.


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Left Coast Kratom Shop: Kratom Powder For Sale


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