Originally Posted by
TheForeigner
Why would you even care if Joe Biden used to hate blacks? He obviously changed his ways and went to another extreme.
Yeah cause the President of the United States is obviously allowed to be honest about his racial views.
Biden drafted the 1986 legislation which gave the same penalty for the possession of 5 grams of crack as 500 grams of powdered cocaine. Biden later sponsored the "Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2007" which would've eliminated the disparity in sentencing, but the act didn't get passed. At the time Biden said that he regretted his earlier bill, but maybe he was just trying to please his constituents (https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...0shrg46050.htm):
Chairman Biden. Good afternoon. The hearing will come to order. We are going to start a few minutes earlier because two of my colleagues who will be here and who have great interest in the subject will come and make an opening statement and will have to leave and come back. So I will get my opening statement out of the way.
I say to the witnesses all, welcome. Delighted to have you here. We appreciate your taking the time.
What we will do is I will make an opening statement here, and then, I am told Senators Kennedy and Feingold each plan on coming, and if any of my Republican colleagues do, and they have to go back to another Committee meeting, then I will let them make an opening statement, and we will turn to all of you for your statements, if that is appropriate, if you do not mind.
So let me begin by saying thanks on behalf of the Subcommittee for being here, all of you. We are going to examine an issue that has long been the subject of vigorous debate and study: the difference in the way in which Federal law treats drug offenses involving powder cocaine versus crack cocaine.
As you all know, under the current law, the mere possession of 5 grams of crack, which is slightly less than the weight two sugar cubes, and these are about the size--you cannot see these, but these look about the size of little sugar cubes here--carries the same 5-year mandatory minimum sentence as distributing 500 grams of powder cocaine, the amount of sugar that I just held up. I will make it clear: This is all sugar up here.
[Laughter.]
Chairman Biden. And not sugar in the parlance of the street sugar.
Many have argued that this 100-to-1 disparity is arbitrary, unnecessary, and unjust, and I agree. And I might say at the outset in full disclosure, I am the guy that drafted this legislation years ago with a guy named Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was the Senator from New York at the time. And crack was new. It was a new ``epidemic'' that we were facing. And we had at that time extensive medical testimony talking about the particularly addictive nature of crack versus powder cocaine. And the school of thought was that we had to do everything we could to dissuade the use of crack cocaine. And so I am part of the problem that I have been trying to solve since then, because I think the disparity is way out of line.
The current disparity in cocaine sentencing I do not think can be justified on the facts we know today and the facts we operated on at the time we set this up.
In 1986, crack was the newest drug on the street, and Congress was told that this smokeable form of cocaine was instantly addictive and that its effect on a child if smoked during pregnancy was far worse than that of other drugs and that it would ravage our inner cities.
I remember one headline that summed it up well, and it read ``New York City Being Swamped by `crack'; Authorities Say They Are Almost Powerless to Halt Cocaine.'' And they called it ``the summer of crack'' in that headline.
In Congress, more than a dozen bills were introduced to increase the penalties for crack. Because we knew so little about it, the proposals were all over the map, ranging from the Reagan administration's proposal of a 20-to-1 disparity to Senator Chiles's proposal--the late Senator Chiles, late Governor Chiles--of 100-to-1.
Senators Byrd, Dole, and I led an effort to enact the Anti- Drug Abuse Act of 1986 which established the current 100-to-1 disparity. Our intentions were good, but much of our information turned out not to be as good as our intentions. Each of the myths upon which we based the sentencing disparity has in some ways been dispelled or altered. We know that crack and powder cocaine are pharmacologically identical, and they are simply two forms of the same drug. Crack and powder cocaine cause identical psychological and physiological effects once they reach the brain. Both forms of cocaine are potentially addictive.
The two drugs' effects on a fetus are identical. The ``generation of crack babies'' many predicted, including me, has not come to pass. In fact, some research shows that the prenatal effects of alcohol exposure are ``significantly more devastating to the developing fetus than cocaine''--although I would point out that if you ingested the same amount of powder cocaine as crack cocaine as frequently, it would have a profound effect;
Crack simply does not incite the type of violence that was feared. Gangs that deal in other types of drugs are every bit as violent as crack gangs. I would argue meth is even more dangerous in terms of the way the gangs operate.
After 21 years of study and review, these facts have convinced me that the 100-to-1 disparity cannot be supported and that the penalties for crack and powder cocaine trafficking merit similar treatment under the law.
The past 21 years has also revealed that the dramatically harsher crack penalties have disproportionately impacted on inner-city communities, the African-African community: 82 percent of those convicted of crack offenses in 2006 were African-Americans.
With many of the starting premises not as starkly viewed as being correct, last June I introduced the Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act, which eliminates the disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses. Totally eliminates it. It does so without raising penalties for powder because there is not a shred of evidence that shows powder penalties are inadequate.
My bill also eliminates the 5-year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack, the only mandatory minimum for possession of a controlled substance.
It focuses Federal resources where we need them most--on major drug kingpins, not users and low-level dealers. And it provides sentencing enhancements for all drug offenses that involve a dangerous weapon or violence.
And it provides $30 million in grants to State and local governments to fund programs that improve the availability of drug treatment for offenders in prisons, jails, juvenile facilities, and those on supervised release.
I want to commend Senators Hatch and Sessions for their leadership on this issue and their respective bills to reduce the disparity. I hope we can work together to permanently fix this injustice, and I am willing, as I am sure they are, to consider one another's proposal and see if we can work something out.
There is a growing movement for bold action on this issue. Eight members of this Committee--four Republicans and four Democrats--are supporting one of the bills pending before this Committee.
In November, the bipartisan United States Sentencing Commission sent Congress an amendment to address what it called, and I quote, the ``urgent and compelling'' crack/powder disparity. Congress accepted the measure, which modestly reduced crack penalties pending comprehensive congressional action.
The report that accompanied the Sentencing Commission's amendment is the fourth such report--and I have a copy of it here--that the Commission has issued in 12 years calling for Congress to take actions to substantially reduce the crack/ power sentencing disparity.
Editorial boards around the country have also urged Congress to act. The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, St. Petersburg Times, the Detroit Free Press, and Miami Herald all have endorsed my bill, and I am sure there are as many that have endorsed the bill of my colleagues who have an alternative approach.
So I welcome debate and discussion on this issue because I am not convinced that any disparity in the sentencing of crack and powder defendants is justified given what we have come to know.
Now I would like to turn over the floor to my distinguished colleague from Alabama, Senator Sessions.
BTW Joe Brown that Robert Byrd was speaking in the same event as Biden around 1972 or 1973, but in the speech above, Biden said that Byrd also cooperated with him in enacting the 100-to-1 crack bill. Byrd was a Grand Dragon of the KKK (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Byrd):
In 1946, Byrd wrote a letter to Samuel Green, the Ku Klux Klan's Grand Wizard, stating, "The Klan is needed today as never before, and I am anxious to see its rebirth here in West Virginia and in every state in the nation."[31] The same year, he was encouraged to run for the West Virginia House of Delegates by the Klan's grand dragon; Byrd won, and took his seat in January 1947.[32][33] However, during his campaign for the United States House of Representatives in 1952, he announced that, "after about a year, I became disinterested, quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization", and that during the nine years that have followed, he had never been interested in the Klan.[34] He said he had joined the Klan because he felt it offered excitement and was anti-communist, but also suggested his participation there "reflected the fears and prejudices" of the time.[15][32]
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What is your point about Biden and Byrd?
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