This doesn’t go nearly far enough or address enough issues, but it’s an important step in the right direction: declaring an end to the massively destructive “War on Drugs” that especially targets people of color:

Support Reforms to Federal Drug Sentencing Laws

Oregonians have the chance to change federal sentences for crack cocaine and challenge some of the racial disparity in the criminal justice system. We need to write, call, email and fax our Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith and encourage them to co-sponsor the Federal Drug Sentencing Reform and Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2007, S. 1711.

The Federal Drug Sentencing Reform and Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2007, S. 1711 is in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Having more bi-partisan co-sponsors will make the committee more likely to send the bill to the full Senate for a vote. Please use the talking points below to email a letter to Senator Ron Wyden and Senator Gordon Smith encouraging them to sign on to the bill as co-sponsors.

Current federal policy maintains a 100-to-1 quantity-based sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. This means that possessing just 5 grams of crack cocaine (10 to 50 doses) results in the same five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence as selling 500 grams of powder cocaine (2,500 to 5,000 doses).

In 1986, Congress established the 100-to-1 sentencing disparity between crack cocaine and powder cocaine offenses based largely on misinformation and media distortions. Since then the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) has revealed that many of these assertions were not supported by sound data and were exaggerated or simply false.

Crack cocaine and powder cocaine are derived from the same drug and, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, have the same effects on the brain and nervous system.

African Americans comprise 80% of the defendants sentenced to federal prison for crack cocaine offenses, even though two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Latino. African Americans serve virtually as much time in federal prison for a drug offense (58.7 months) as whites do for a violent offense (61.7 months).

To email your federal Senators, you must type or paste your message into a form on their web sites. We recommend typing your message in Word or whatever word processing program you use and then cutting and pasting your message into the Senators’ web forms. This is the link to Senator Gordon Smith’s web form. This is the link to Senator Ron Wyden’s web form.

Thank you for all you do as part of the Oregon Action Alert Network!

And if you’re casting about for a serious reform organization that tackles real hard, real important issues that matter to support, here’s one.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Equal/Civil Rights, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.