President Obama signs law eliminating disparities in cocaine cases

Source: USA Today

President Obama signed a law today designed to ensure that crimes involving crack and powder cocaine are handled the same way.

The Fair Sentencing Act is "a bipartisan bill to help right a longstanding wrong by narrowing sentencing disparities between those convicted of crack cocaine and powder cocaine," Obama said last week in a speech to the National Urban League. "It's the right thing to do."

The law ends what the Drug Policy Alliance calls the problem of the 100-to-1 ratio.

(snip)
"By signing this reform into law President Obama will save taxpayer money, reduce racial disparities, and better prioritize federal law enforcement towards major crime syndicates instead of low-level offender," said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance.

Read more: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2010/08/obama-signs-law-eliminating-disparities-in-cocaine-cases/1

:applause: :applause: :applause:

n/t

:grr:

But I'm happy to see the crack law finally changed.

But it's something, I guess. This sentencing disparity has put too many people in prison for far too long.

As I understand it, it's been reduced from 100 to 1 down to about 18 to one. Still unbalanced, but a huge improvement. I don't really hold Obama particularly responsible for this one in any real sense. Congress has been the obstacle on this for a couple of decades. This was an actually bipartisan effort. One might actually benefit from figuring out how it was accomplished.

But we can't let the actual definition of words interfere with a good headline, can we?

18:1 is FAR better than 100:1, but they didn't eliminate shit.

Hey, W, better watch out.

:kick: