Lesser politicking - bad billsFollow

In many states (or at least many jurisdictions) cops don't give two shits about consumer amounts of pot; hell, they don't even care if they catch you driving stoned.

As long as you're white and reasonably well-kept and well-behaved, at least.

Let me start by saying I'm a firm believer in the "legalize and tax" position (with some issues though). However, some aspects of the issue aren't very fairly presented IMO.



It's not the penalties that are disparate, but the quantities of the drug that trigger a given offense. 5 grams of crack versus 500 grams of powder trigger a 5 year minimum sentence. 50 grams of crack versus 5000 grams of powder trigger a 10 year minimum sentence.



Crack cocaine is also much more likely to be psychologically addictive in smaller dosages and with fewer times used. Does that justify a 100 to 1 difference in quantity versus punishment? Hard to say.

What's strange about this is that you can look at it both ways. The quantity of either is higher than any average user is ever going to have on their possession, so we're really talking about dealers here. And while most crack dealers are black, so are most of their users. Do we say it's unfair because black dealers are being targeted for higher prison sentences? Or do we say that by not doing so, we're protecting the predominately black neighborhoods they sell in?

It's not as black and white (haha!) as you might think. There are a host of sociological differences between the use and sales methodology of the two drugs. You don't see a whole lot of guys selling powder cocaine on the street corner. While I agree that the sentencing rules were certainly a panic reaction to the drugs introduction (and incredibly fast adoption in poor neighborhoods), it's also a pretty strong fact that those same neighborhoods didn't see nearly as much cocaine use prior to the introduction of crack. It's somewhat simplistic to just insist that they are the same drug. Clearly, something about crack is different enough to create a massive increase in addiction rates among poor populations where cocaine itself did not.


I also don't think changing the sentencing rules for crack cocaine is going to change a darn thing in terms of drug use. It'll just make it harder to get any single drug dealer off the street. But it also wont help at all either...

I read enough of this to know that you made up the whole thing.

That crack is more likely to create a dependence in the user more quickly than powder cocaine? The point here is that $10 of crack can turn a poor person into an addict who'll likely never ever get out of that state, making their already troubled neighborhoods that much worse with increased crime, violence, theft, and prostitution. Meanwhile, the guy doing lines of coke could spend hundreds of dollars and then walk away if he doesn't feel like it.

It's about the sociological impact of the two forms of the drug. That's why one is more heavily punished than the other.



And that's also the point. Crack is packaged differently. It's why the rules were set the way they were. Dealers typically walk around with just a few rocks and their customers maybe buy one at a time. Total quantity of the drug itself is very small, with more people dealing (and more violence). If they'd applied the same rules as they had for powder cocaine, you'd only be able to wrist slap the dealers.



The punishment should not be associated with how much the criminal stands to gain, but the harm his actions are causing. That *is* why we punish people, right? It's hard to argue that crack cocaine doesn't do vastly more harm per gram than powder cocaine. The effects of crack are obvious and ubiquitous in many poor neighborhoods. The effects of powder cocaine? Almost imperceptible unless you look very hard.

Look. One of the primary arguments for legalization of drugs is that it's a "victimless crime". That is largely the truth for powder cocaine. It's absolutely not for crack. We can argue back and forth about why that is, but every statistic bears this out. The sociological impact of crack cocaine has been massively more harmful than that of powder cocaine. It's literally destroyed neighborhoods that were barely affected by cocaine previously.



How it "strikes you" is irrelevant. That's ignorance talking. When you look at the data surrounding the issue it becomes clear that these are not equivalent drugs either in use or impact. And it's not about racism you dork! Poor people were targeted with crack as a means of getting them hooked on a drug they previously had little interest in. It was cooked into the fastest and most addictive form possible, and then sold in small doses which even poor people could afford. The result is horrific. You talk about stereotypes, but it's not about that. It's about a form of a drug tailor made to turn people who are already poor into junkies.



Oh please! Take your racism tinted glasses off for a moment and see the freaking truth.



Really? And how many of those middle class neighborhoods, full of rich kids and stock brokers and businessmen using powder cocaine have turned into cesspools of despair? How many of them are turning tricks to get their next hit? How many of them end out stealing and killing, not because they are dealing the drugs, but merely to be able to afford to be users?

The story of the guy losing it all to cocaine is a rare example used as a backdrop for anti-drug PSAs. The same story happens every single day with crack. It's so common it's not even in the "it could happen to you" category. It's just what does happen. Crack is vastly more addictive on much much smaller doses. Put in the hands of people already looking for escape from their lives, and priced low enough that they can steal the money to get their next hit it's a scourge.



Um... Whatever. It's a meaningless gesture, designed to get people ignorant of the facts to think that some kinds of unfairness in the world is being corrected. Really? You think this helps in any way? You're being played...

Edited, Mar 23rd 2010 10:57am by gbaji

Cocaine = crack. It's that simple. It's a different name based on it's whether or not it's been ground into a powder. Same addictiveness, same strength - different sentencing.

The law was a knee-jerk reaction. It's being fixed. Meaningless gesture to you as you seem to not be familiar with things like justice and equality. For the country, though, it's one little correction towards balancing our social books.

No. It's not. The active ingredient is the same, but the chemical composition of the mix is completely different. It's about delivery into the blood stream. Crack can be smoked and therefore enters the blood stream instantly, creating a much more intense but shorter lived high. Powder cocaine cannot be smoked. It's typically snorted and is a much less intense euphoria, with a longer much much more mellow high.

The addictive aspects of a very intense but short lived high for a small amount of up front buy-in money should be obvious. Most poor and working class people, buying and using a baggie of cocaine would likely have a "that's it?" response, followed by "Well, that wasn't worth my 20 bucks...". A single 5 or 10 dollar rock of crack will produce a "Hell yah!" result in most people. A poor person can get hooked on it quite easily and quickly. It takes a pretty significant financial investment so to speak to get to the same level of dependence on powder cocaine.

It is absolutely false to say that since both contain cocaine, that they are both the same drug and should be treated the same.



Of that, I have no doubt. However, their knee-jerk reaction was more informed than the responses I'm seeing on this thread. They had an excuse. This new drug had appeared and was spreading like wildfire and destroying whole neighborhoods. What is your excuse? You have the benefit of time to think about the issue rationally, but you choose not to.



That's an odd method to use to "balance our social books". So we're going to make it easier for drug dealers to turn people in poor neighborhoods into hopeless addicts? If your reasoning is that this is unfair because there's a larger percentage of minorities in these neighborhoods, then I'm not sure how this balances anything. I'm quite sure that the white supremacists are taking the same position as you. They just aren't confused that this is going to make things "better" for the brown skinned people of the country...

There are only two reasons that I can come up with for your comments.

1. you just have to disagree on principle.
2. you are a coke head trying to justify your habit.

Either way, you choose not to see beyond your own pleasures and/or pains to acknowledge that this one little bill could provide a tidge of relief to the socio-economic stress this country is under.

It's not all about you dude.

Or...

3. There really is a significant difference between cocaine in powder form compared to cocaine in rock form.



At the expense of the largely minority neighborhoods who'll be negatively impacted. It's strange that you're willing to accept huge amounts of socio-economic cost to create a welfare state to trap poor people in poverty, but are unwilling to pay a much smaller socio-economic cost to attempt to reduce a harm being done to those same poor people.

It's startling the consistency with which the liberal social agenda seeks to make as many brown skinned people poor as possible, keep them in their ghettos where they wont bother you, and make sure it's darn near impossible for them to ever escape? What's funny is that you hold all of these positions and honestly believe you're doing it out of some sort of social good.

What's not funny at all is that they think the same thing! It's like a big freaking cosmic joke...



No. It's not. It's about an increasing number of people who can't look past the assumed rhetoric they've been indoctrinated with to see the very real harm they are doing to the very groups of people they think they are helping. Do you think you help anyone by making it harder to impose stiff penalties on those who sell crack? How does one make that argument?

Ludicrous. Knock it off, you sound like a slobbering lunatic. Those analogies are all flawed, unless the "less-harmful" items are already weaponized. Coke is already a drug, and frankly, ******, a tree is far more dangerous than a baseball bat. You make weird arguments when you're coked out of your mind, bro.



No, you didn't make that argument, because it's the answer to all of yours.



All drugs are designed to addict, dork. And you're asking the wrong dude about his experiences with coke and crack. I've known lots of very everyday people, doing every drug you can imagine.

Anyway, all irrelevant. Look at this: There are a hundred kinds of heroin, we prosecute them all the same. There are a million varieties of meth, we punish them all the same. There are two kinds of coke, and we punish them totally differently.

Bad law.

Life lesson#3,753: Statements of fact with no basis in actual fact are counterproductive and generally off-putting to the reader.

In other words, declarative statements are bad.

I write them down as I make them up.

Cocaine is addicting. Honestly, I don't know if the method makes any difference in the addictiveness, if it does it's likely just related to the dose. However, the form of the cocaine doesn't determine the method of use... so it's a moot point.