When Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1986, proponents boasted that stiff mandatory minimum sentences would be bad news for major drug traffickers. Ha. Over time, drug kingpins learned that they had little to fear from the law -- especially if they were dealing crack cocaine. The federal law institutionalized a 100-to-1 crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity by mandating a five-year minimum term for 5 grams of crack -- the weight of less than two sugar packets -- or for 500 grams of powder cocaine.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama campaigned against the disparity in 2008, as it resulted in longer sentences for black offenders than white offenders. In 2006, more than four out of five of those prosecuted on federal crack charges were black. White offenders accounted for fewer than 1 in 10 crack offenders. The ratio for powder cocaine offenders, however, was 27 percent black, 14 percent white and 58 percent Latino.

Department of Justice Criminal Division chief Lanny Breuer testified against the disparity before a Senate subcommittee last week. As Breuer noted, the crack law doesn't target major traffickers; 55 percent of federal crack offenders were street-level dealers in 2005, while 7.3 percent of powder offenders were street-level dealers.

As a congressional staffer, Eric Sterling helped write the 1986 law. Now the president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, Sterling told me that when the law "first passed, no one said this is an anti-black law. Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus voted for the law. They saw the crack epidemic as a plague on inner-city black communities."

But over time, the disparity between the time served by white and black offenders alienated the black community. Asa Hutchinson, Drug Enforcement Administration chief under President George W. Bush, also testified against the 100-to-1 disparity. A former federal prosecutor, Hutchison observed that the law meted out a five-year sentence for 10 to 50 doses of crack, or 2,500 to 5,000 doses of powder cocaine. He sees "a disparate racial impact" that undermines "the integrity of our criminal justice system." Continued...