Are Cocaine Sentencing Laws Unfair?

According to the Federal Trafficking Penalties, a first-time offender convicted of possessing five grams of crack cocaine, will receive a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison without parole. Five grams of crack cocaine, which can fit into a tablespoon, can be broken into 50–200 "rocks" to be smoked.

If that same first-time offender had been convicted of possessing powder cocaine—the offender would need 500 grams of powder to trigger the same mandatory sentence. In other words, the offender could possess 100 times as much powder cocaine as crack cocaine. Five hundred grams is over one pound and would fill a cereal bowl. It is the equivalent of 10,000 doses suitable for snorting or dissolving in water and injecting.

There is a relationship between crack and powder cocaine. Cocaine arrives in the United States from Columbia in...