[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 188 (Tuesday, November 28, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2249]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            CRIMINAL PENALTIES FOR CRACK COCAINE POSSESSION

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                           HON. DOUG BEREUTER

                              of nebraska

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 28, 1995

  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member commends to his colleagues an 
editorial which appeared in the Omaha World-Herald on November 25, 
1995.

       Good reasons exist for the courts to punish crack cocaine 
     possession more severely than possession of a comparable 
     amount of powdered cocaine. Some of the reasons haven't 
     received the emphasis they deserve.
       Crack is a form of cocaine that has been processed to allow 
     it to be more easily ingested. Federal sentencing guidelines 
     make it a more serious crime to push crack than to push a 
     comparable amount of cocaine powder even though the chemical 
     composition of the two is the same. Because crack trafficking 
     is mostly a black crime, some people claim that the longer 
     sentences are racially discriminatory.
       Crack is by far the more dangerous product because it fuels 
     gang warfare, drive-by shootings and the breakdown of inner-
     city families. Cheap and potent crack is ripping apart black 
     neighborhoods in Omaha and elsewhere across the country.
       Crack is less expensive and is easier to use. It causes a 
     quicker ``high.'' It is more readily addictive. The toll in 
     human suffering is therefore greater. The punishment for 
     selling and distributing crack is greater, too, as it should 
     be.
       The crack debate is like some other matters in which race 
     has been illogically inserted. Activist lawyers have taken to 
     arguing that any law is discriminatory if it doesn't produce 
     results that are perfectly colorblind. In New York, a subway 
     fare increase was recently struck down on the grounds that it 
     discriminated against black people. It did nothing of the 
     kind. But the plaintiffs' lawyers argued that more black 
     people used the subways and therefore to raise the fare was 
     discriminatory.
       Melanie Kirkpatrick, a Wall Street Journal writer, has 
     written that such thinking is a ``perversion of the Equal 
     Protection Clause of the Constitution.'' She said, ``Under 
     this philosophy, it doesn't matter who did what to whom and 
     for what reason; all that matters is outcome.''
       More should matter. In the case of crack cocaine, it 
     matters what the pushers do to their families, their 
     neighborhoods and their communities. Of course the criminal 
     laws should be colorblind. But that doesn't mean they should 
     be twisted to produce a racially perfect mix of defendants. 
     The idea is to punish people the most who are doing the most 
     harm to society. That shouldn't change.

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