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Congress urged to repeal crack sentences 1 hour, 46 minutes ago



WASHINGTON - Congress should repeal a law that puts first-time offenders behind bars for at least five years for possessing tiny amounts of crack cocaine, the U.S. Sentencing Commission said Tuesday.

Enacted amid the crack epidemic of the 1980s, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act imposes the mandatory minimum sentence for possessing five grams of crack, which weighs the same as five paper clips.

It takes a hundred times the amount of powder cocaine to result in the same prison term as for crack, the commission said. It urged Congress to deal with that disparity by increasing threshold quantities for crack cocaine offenses to focus on major traffickers.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070515/ap_on_go_ot/crack_cocaine