Sentences for Crack Dealers

This interesting article does not address the most glaring inequity of all contained in the federal (and the state) drug statutes; namely, that punishment is based on the total amount of a substance or mixture containing the illegal chemical regardless of the purity of the mixture. Thus if five grams of cocaine are mixed into a 4,995-gram bag of powdered sugar, the punishment for possessing the sugar mixture in the bag is equal to possessing 5,000 grams of pure cocaine.

In the perspective of the article, trace amounts of cocaine base (crack) detected in cocaine powder would convert the entire powder mixture into crack for punishment purposes.

WILLIAM CRADER

Encino