Obama's signing of the bill in the Oval Office was open to news photographers but not the rest of the media. He made no remarks.
But as a longtime thorn for the black community, the matter is important to a key Obama constituency.
The quarter-century-old law that Congress changed with the new bill has subjected tens of thousands of blacks to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while giving far more lenient sentences to those, mainly whites, caught with powder.
However, the new law is not retroactive.
And it applies only to federal defendants, with no impact on state mandatory sentencing laws. Most drug arrests occur at the state level.
The measure Obama signed changes a 1986 law that was enacted at a time when crack cocaine use was rampant and considered a particularly violent drug. Under that law, a person convicted of possessing five grams of crack cocaine session got the same mandatory prison term as someone with 500 grams — 100 times — of powder cocaine. The legislation reduces that ratio to about 18-1.
The bill also eliminates the five-year mandatory minimum for first-time possession of crack, the first time since the Nixon administration that Congress has repealed a mandatory minimum sentence. It would not apply retroactively.
1 comments:
I think it's sad when a fuc4e4 up law that all know is geared toward putting Black people in the pen can't be changed to make it the same for all drug users weather it is cooked or uncooked it is cocaine and the law should be the same for all users.And this speaks to our president being the most powerful office in the land.it is just not true.the money lenders and big money people are ruining America.
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