High Price

tough mandatory drug sentences and then repealed them when they failed to have the intended effects. Almost immediately, it also became clear that the enforcement of the laws was having a biased impact—not because it was racist in intent, but because of the way law enforcement actually works and the way crack itself is sold.
    Here’s why. It is obviously a lot easier to catch people selling drugs in open-air markets than it is when people sell behind closed doors. Also, the more transactions a dealer or user makes, the greater the likelihood of being caught and arrested simply because more transactions means more opportunity to be caught in the act. One of the keys to crack’s success on the market was the selling of very small doses at a low price, something that obviously increases the number of transactions needed to make a profit for the dealer; and because the actual dose of cocaine contained in street crack is low, it might necessitate users to make several trips. Since it was a new product, street marketing was also important to generate sales.
    Unlike powder cocaine, crack was sold in smaller doses, making it affordable even to people with little money. These folks are both more likely to buy and sell on the street and to engage in more frequent sales transactions. Crack cocaine increased the prevalence of both street markets and frequent transactions in many black communities. Law enforcement agencies placed considerable resources in black communities aimed at arresting both dealers and users. This combination of factors meant that creating disparate sentences for crack would inevitably—even without any racist intent—put more black people in prison for much longer terms. And so, in Los Angeles, for example—a city of nearly 4 million people—at the peak of the crack epidemic, not a single white person was arrested on federal crack cocaine charges, even though whites in the cities used and sold crack.
    Nonetheless, one of the key leaders in the war on crack cocaine was New York’s black congressman from Harlem, Charles Rangel. He was then chairman of the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control. In 1985, he’d criticized the Reagan administration for its “turtle like speed” in cracking down on drugs. 6 In 1986, his was one of the loudest voices calling for the imposition of tough measures to fight crack cocaine.
    Rather than considering what was happening in New York under similarly harsh legislation that had not “solved the drug problem” but had resulted in mass incarceration of black and brown people, he enthusiastically supported the most draconian drug war policies. That included the 100:1 disparity in sentencing for crack and powder cocaine, respectively, first ensconced in federal sentencing in the 1986 law. Seventeen out of twenty-one members of the Congressional Black Caucus, of which Rangel is a founding member, sponsored this law. 7
    Under the 1986 provision, a person convicted of selling 5 grams of crack cocaine was required to serve a minimum sentence of five years in prison. To receive the same sentence for trafficking in powder cocaine, an individual needed to possess 500 grams of cocaine—100 times the crack cocaine amount. In practical terms, 5 grams of cocaine results in 100–200 doses, whereas 500 grams results in 10,000–20,000 doses. From a scientific or pharmacological perspective, the disparity wasn’t justified: it didn’t accurately reflect any real difference in harm related to the drug. And soon, the Anti–Drug Abuse Act of 1988 extended cocaine-related penalties to persons convicted of simple possession, even first-time offenders. Simple possession of any other illicit drug, including powder cocaine or heroin, by a first-time offender carried a maximum penalty of one year in prison.
    Overwhelmingly, those incarcerated under the federal anticrack laws were black: for example, in 1992, the figure was 91 percent and in 2006 it was 82 percent. 8 While the intent may not have been racist, the outcome—lack of outrage and failure to change course in response to the disproportionate number of black men who were convicted, imprisoned, and disenfranchised—certainly was. The result, in many black communities, was an unchecked disaster that reverberates even today.
    And as the late 1980s turned into the early 1990s, I began to see what I then thought were the effects of crack cocaine on my own family and friends. My cousins Amp and Michael became my