Florence woman seeks to ‘crack disparity’

Many U.S. residents are expressing their discontent with a law that requires stiffer penalties and longer prison sentences for those convicted of crimes involving crack possession while their cocaine-possessing counterparts receive lesser sentences.

A person in possession of five grams of crack cocaine is required to serve a mandatory five-year prison term. It would take 500 grams of powder cocaine for the same five-year sentence to be imposed, according to the The Sentencing Project, a national group that seeks to promote a fair and effective criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing laws.

Florence resident Tracey Wardy is one of many activists protesting the disparity between crack and powder cocaine.

Wardy became an activist after her cousin, former Lake City police officer Shanita McKnight, was arrested and charged with drug trafficking and extortion charges. McKnight was convicted of those charges in October and is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday.

“I didn’t really know about this law until Shanita started going through the things that she was going through,” Wardy said. “Going through the trial with Shanita and hearing other stories recently, I’m becoming really passionate about the disparity.”

There shouldn’t be a difference in the sentencing because there isn’t any real difference between the two drugs, Wardy said.

“The only difference in the drug is the way it’s manufactured and the way its taken,” she said. “It’s the same drug.”

Aggressive prosecution of drug crimes in the 1980s is what created the different mandatory sentences, Wardy said.

“They wanted to look like they were tough on crime, on drugs. That’s when it really started,” she said. “And they came up with the mandatory sentencing laws.”

In the 1980s, law enforcement officers and law makers wanted the law to target drug “kingpins,” but instead it targeted low-level drug dealers and users, Wardy said.

“It’s catching addicts and they don’t know who they are selling drugs for, they don’t have any information to trade with the government,” she said. “They aren’t bringing the drugs in. You can put a man on the moon, but you can’t figure out who’s bring drugs into the U.S.?”

Some would argue that people who use crack are more violent and more likely to commit crimes than those who use cocaine, but this isn’t true, Wardy said.

“A lot of people would say that, but that’s been dispelled. It’s not true,” she said. “The rate of violent crimes pertaining to crack cocaine has actually gone down.”

Poverty-stricken areas have more crack users because it’s cheaper, Wardy said, but that doesn’t necessarily mean those people are more violent.

Wardy traveled to Washington, D.C., twice within the last month to meet with lawmakers from South Carolina about the issue as part of the National Crack the Disparity Month of Advocacy. Wardy and about 70 other advocates met with U.S. Reps. Jim Clyburn and Bob Inglis and U.S. Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint. The coalition is pushing the Drug Sentencing Reform and Cocaine Kingpin Trafficking Act of 2009 (H.R. 256), which would finally eliminate the current disparity.

“We talked with them and got their opinions on the mandatory sentencing laws,” she said. “Clyburn is in favor of doing away with the mandatory sentencing laws. Most of them were willing work on doing away with the mandatory sentencing laws.”

DeMint told Wardy that in the beginning, he thought crack was a more violent drug than powder cocaine, she said.

“He was willing to rethink that,” Wardy said.

President Barack Obama’s administration also is in favor of doing away with mandatory sentencing, she said.

Many lawmakers still feel crack possession and distribution crimes should get stricter penalties than cocaine, but the differences in the sentences shouldn’t be as drastic as they are now, Wardy said.

For more information, visit http://www.sentencingproject.org online.

— Staff writer Jamie Rogers can be reached at (843) 317-7266. Comment on this story at scnow.com.