Pubdate: Fri, 30 Jul 2010
Source: Ledger-Enquirer (Columbus,GA)
Copyright: 2010 Ledger-Enquirer
Contact:  http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/enquirer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237
Author: Dusty Nix

REVISION OF BAD DRUG LAW LONG OVERDUE

Even without the glaring racial disparity, the cocaine sentencing gap
has never made sense.

It makes no sense that thousands people sentenced for possession of
the older, more familiar and more expensive powdered cocaine were
given far more lenient treatment than those sentenced to long prison
terms for crack, the cheaper crystallized form of the drug. For more
than 20 years, Americans have been witness to a particularly senseless
kind of criminal justice regressiveness: Like a bottom-loaded tax, it
takes a harder hit on those lower down the economic scale.

Congress, spooked by the spread of crack in the 1980s, established a
five-year mandatory minimum sentence for first-time crack possession,
and set prison terms for crack possession equivalent to 100 times the
same amount of powder.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who voted for the 1986 bill, said when crack
first appeared, "there was near panic in the halls of Congress ... It
scared us to death. We overreacted."

Add the fact that most of those convicted for powder cocaine have been
white, while some 80 percent of those convicted for crack are black or
Latino, and the law all but collapses under the weight of its own injustice.

Unfortunately, even bad laws don't just go away. Fortunately, Congress
has decided to help the dismantling of this one along. By voice vote,
the House on Wednesday approved a bill, already passed by the Senate
in March, to reverse the most blatant inequities in the 1986 law.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill will save $42
million over the next five years in reduced prison costs. That would
be one good argument for changing the law. Twenty-four years of gross
injustice would be a better one.

Honeymoon over

The wisdom of a "grace period" granted to Georgia drivers in the
enforcement of a new anti-texting law was, in the opinion of some,
debatable at best.

As of Sunday, the debate is moot.

The first day of August brings official enforcement of a law against
reading, writing or sending text messages while driving; it also
prohibits cell phone use by teen drivers.

Through July, the Georgia State Patrol has been issuing warnings to
drivers seen texting at the wheel. Drivers on Georgia roads should now
consider themselves duly warned.

As of Sunday, drivers caught texting while driving will be subject to
a $150 fine and one point on the state's license "scoring" system,
even for a first offense.

Texting at the wheel is a truly egregious form of recklessness, and
responsible drivers in Georgia have waited for this law long enough.
Maybe a month longer than enough.

- -- Dusty Nix, for the editorial board 
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