Crack Vs. Powder Cocaine

In thinking about the USA's "war on drugs" and the laws carried out to crack down on the selling and distribution of illegal drugs, what do people think about sentencing when it comes to crack vs. powder?

Crack comes from powder cocaine, yet the severity of sentencing ratio is 100:1.

If a person is caught with 50 grams of crack cocaine w/intent to distribute they are automatically required to serve a ten year mandatory prison sentence. A person would have to be caught with 5,000 grams of powder cocaine to receive the same punishment.

Where do people stand on this? If Crack is derived from powder Cocaine, why does one drug equal lesser punishment? You cannot have Crack without Powder.

in 1992, nationally, 92.6% of defendents convicted with Crack possession were Black and only 4.7% were white. By contrast, 45.2% sentenced for powder Cocaine were White while 20.7% were Black.

Do people feel this is a fair law set in place by the federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986? Do people feel this is a racial disparity within the US justice system? Is this law racially motivated or this law simply in place because Crack is seen as a cheaper drug that is easier to buy and distribute and is more often associated with poverty and violence?

Please discuss. Attempt to be thoughtful and not racist.

 

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I think trying to make illegal something which a significant portion of the population wants to do is ludicrous in a "free" society.

 

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Yes, to some extent...but many people also want to rape little children, harvest human body parts for edible purposes, and generally mutilate, destroy, and harm others in varying degrees...should those be legal too?

Anyway, what do you think about the differences in sentencing? That is my question.

 

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drug laws vary from state to state and country. if you say that crack and cocaine are the same then you can include marijuana in that and have one law. on a practical sense i have heard of someone jumping out a window from crack amd a few deaths. generally it takes longer to get to that point with powder form.

guess they are basing the laws on the severity of the consequences.

also the criminal acts associated with the drugs are factored in.

you could say that about anything.

 

Thoughts on the real "white devil"

The first thing to remember is that cocaine is one of life's embodiments of pure evil.

And the second thing is that this doesn't really matter to the "drug warriors", except that it helps their efforts to hurt people.

An interesting note about the racism aspect is that while vastly more white people use crack than black, it is the blacks who have suffered the greatest wrath of this ludicrous crack standard. Convenient how that works out, eh? At least, for the drug warriors.

Somewhere at the root of the drug war is a perverse desire for control. It isn't actually about harm reduction, which I think should be obvious to anyone who's been paying attention. Drugs are best handled as a health issue, not a criminal matter; we ought not pretend that, when the first step to getting treatment is confessing to a host of felonies, addicts will be remotely anxious to undertake such an endeavor. This is why many don't seek help until everything falls down.

I was able to walk away from cocaine. The hardest thing about it was the decision to kick someone out of my life, and that didn't happen until one night when he annoyed the hell out of me and I finally lost it. But that had been coming for a while. It started one night when, after taking a piss, I stood there for a minute staring at my reflection in the mirror, letting a strange shadow of a thought emerge into the light. Finally, I said to my reflection, "You're doing cocaine. Alone."

Being driven home by the police after a rock-star, blackout night of lines and booze didn't do it. Nor did that realization that there was a growing problem. I knew damn well I needed to quit, and it was fairly easy to stop. Except, of course, for the fact of this friend.

He was, in technical terms, a fucking basket case. The upshot of it is that I have never, in all my years, actually paid for cocaine. How the hell does that work? And I've heard the most absurd line, one that few ever encounter: "How much will it cost me to see you do this line?" Really. I've been offered a hundred bucks to coke up before.

And what finally did it was one night when I didn't feel like going out for a drink. The guy drove over to my place, pounded on the door, and, when I let him in, proceeded to harangue me until I finally exploded, kicked him out, and told him to never darken my doorstep again. Sad that it had to come to that, but there was no way I was up for another one of those nights.

And since then, I haven't even had to ask myself the cocaine question. It's not around, so I don't have to make any real effort to not do it. I have no desire to actually go out and buy the shit. It would seem, then, that I'm one of the lucky ones.

Not everybody is.

Breaking people of cocaine and other hard drugs can be a complicated task. In addition to the will to quit, one needs to be completely isolated from their prior acquisition environment. I had managed to go some time without giving over to repeated offers to do coke, but eventually I would have given in.

The only thing that keeps me from openly hating the stuff is that I know that hatred leads to irrationality, and if cocaine as a social issue is ever to be responsibly addressed, I can't afford to be irrational about it.

 

Either one of them can lead anyone to a ruined life if they get "hooked" on them. Even though they claim it isn't "addicting" , they really are very strong habit forming drugs and very expensive once you get "hooked"

onto them. You'd sell yourself and your family to get a "fix" with either of them but the crack is even more powerful and even quicker to become a very bad habit. Neither one should be allowed to become legal for

only the people that control it now will control it if it ever does become legalized, which shouldn't ever happen. One time you smoke crack is all that is needed to get you "hooked". Coke takes a few more times but

it is almost as quick. Always be certain of what is put into the coke as the dealers use many chemicals to "cut" the coke with to increase their profit margins. There's also different types of coke, some much higher

grade than others so most of the time you get screwed by getting the lower quality crap.

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I keep hearing that comment often from those who try to "defend" drug use. And I always ask what they mean by "significant portion" of the population ...no one seems to want to answer it or can't.

What percentage of the population of, say the USA, uses cocaine and/or crack?

Significant portion?

Baron Max

 

The problem of answering that question

It's hard to tell, since the question would oblige respondents to confess to crimes. Many would admit to using at some unspecified time in the past, but avoid saying they are current users. And, to the flip side, there are some who will actually exaggerate their drug use. In my circles, we use the figurative phrase, "smoking your body weight", which comes from an old Doonesbury strip. I could smoke my body weight in pot through the course of my life, but I tried doing the math once, and, well, it will take a long, long time. Especially since I gained thirty-five pounds when I tried to quit nicotine last year.

However, if you phrase the question in terms of general illicit drug use, some statistics suggest as much as ten percent of the American population is stoned. Throw in pill-poppers, and you'll be in between fifteen and twenty percent getting high. Add in cocaine and heroin, you might actually hit a quarter.

 

Is crack 100x as potent as powder cocaine? Is only 1/100 the mass of crack needed to get the "high" desired? Isn't crack sold as "rocks" for a relatively low cost v/s powder cocaine?

 

Crack is a cheap dirty high. The euphoria is powerful, but extremely brief. The addictiveness is horrible, due to the fact that once you finish inhaling the first hit, you crave a second, because you're already on the down trip. Crack takes over the lives of the poor faster than cocaine because of these factors.

A cocaine high-snorted-can last a couple of hours if the quality is around 50 percent... the problem with it is that pure cocaine is almost guaranteed to cause a heart attack, or that's the common thought based on Len Bias' experience.

 

What exactly IS crack cocaine?

 

very instructional... how do you make bathtub LSD now...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crack_cocaine

 

Tiassa australia gets around these issues by means of the ABS. NOTHING said to an ABS worker can EVER be repeated in raw form with identifying features atached. This was an issue that came up with regard to the new terriousm laws where even the ABS COULD be required to pass infomation onto the police. Understandably the ABS were pissed off about this and the law was changed in there favor. Anyway the ABS has the ability to get acurate statistics even on illegal and hidden behavor because they are even more confidentual than a lawyer. Also they can get health statistics as well from medicare and directly from doctors.

I 100% agree with you that drug use should be a health issue. I have no problem with procuting dealers, especially those who bring in it in or cook it but the user and even the "dealer to friends" level people should be only treated by health. At most the police should be empowered to remove the substance and refer them to health units but that should be as far as the police or the legal should be involved. More importantly the state goverments should be given the power to act as nessary. At the moment they are inhibited by drug importation laws as well because these are federal laws. They SHOULD be able to import drugs for the purpose of distribution through pharmacies for adicts if this is what the health sector are telling them they need to do. Firstly it would deal with the issue that drugs like heroin are often cut with battery acid rather than inert harmless substances. Then there is the fact that purity of the drugs keep changing on the streets. Whenever a new surplier comes on the sceen alot of people die and the ambulance workload almost tripples in terms of OD's because they tend to start with very pure drugs and then cut the purity down latter. If the states surplied the drugs through the DOH then these issues would disapear

 

Would anyone agree with a program which would allow a reduced sentence for offenders who agree to a voluntary sterilization? Seeing as how the majority of children born to drug addicts will be convicted of felonies, and the moral objections to abortion, would this not be a good tool for reducing the crime rate and the growing income gap between rich and poor?

 

NO i wouldnt agree with that at all, i dont agree with putting adicts through the legal system AT ALL.

maybe if you stoped stigmatising it and started treating it as a serious health issue the numbers of cases of long term social disadvantage would stop

Hell while we are at it why dont we sterlise all black people because they have a higher conviction rate right?
what about all aborigionals because there are so many acholics amongst them?
what about all gays because after all how dare they pass there abnormaility on?
what about all the disabled because hell they will never be able to raise a child?
what about all the people with depression because they are more likly to BECOME drug adicts?

What a fucking stupid and hypocritical comment

 

So you oppose giving drug addicts the opportunity avoid unwanted pregnancies? You are in favor of children born addicted to drugs into a home with no money, often no father, and almost no prospects of bettering their socio-economic standings?

 

im in favor of giving drug adicts the assistance they NEED. the US health system is a crime against humanity and the "war on drugs" just perpetuates it.

Fix the health system and actually put drug adiction where it belongs

 

Very basically, cocaine cannot be smoked. It would be like trying to burn chalk or talcum powder. But drugs that are smoked typically hit you faster and harder, but last shorter. To avoid violating James warning, I will not give an exact recipe, but crack is basically just cocaine mixed with baking soda and water, and then the water is evaporated, this makes the cocaine smokable and you are left with a cheap form of crack. . You can also make crack with other more vile substances, but thats much more dangerous and diffucult and takes patience, which is something that a crack addict does not have!