Where Is the Justice?

Where Is The Justice?

Is it time to change the law? The US laws were changed instantly trough out the years, but not all of them. There are some concepts in law that are should be changed due to discovering new facts and circumstances about some of the crimes. For instance, the crimes that are involved cocaine have different types of penalties such as the felonies that contain powder cocaine are punished less severe than crack cocaine offenses. Therefore, the average crack cocaine sentences have been about 10 years, but for the powder cocaine sentences are seven years. Thus people who deal with crack cocaine as few as 5 grams get five year mandatory minimum prison term when those who have been caught with 500 grams of powder cocaine take the same punishment. Generally, both kinds of drugs are similar because they have the same base which is cocaine. The only difference is that powder cocaine made from pure cocaine, and the crack cocaine is rocks which are commonly mixture of soda, water, and cocaine (“How to Make Crack”). Therefore, the severe crack cocaine mandatory minimum sentencing should be reduced or at least equalized as same as powder cocaine.

The laws regarding crack cocaine were issued around 1980s, and the information associated with crack cocaine on which the 1980’s laws were based is wrong, so laws should be changed. When those laws were introduced, the Congress believed that crack was instantly addicting. At that time, the lawmakers were afraid that crack cocaine would spread to the extremely wide range and have a negative effect on a whole nation, and that would end up with a tremendous increase of violent crimes. However, it turns out that lawmakers were wrong. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, the crack has almost the same negative effect on users and “produces harm no more severe than powder cocaine, even to the unborn” (“Houston Chronicle”). The commission’s research also showed that crack’s use has never...