ATLANTA - In a major departure from both Republicans and his own White House, Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore all but said the laws that treat crack cocaine far more harshly than powdered cocaine should be eliminated.
Recently, the Senate voted to reduce disparities that were imposed by Congress in the late 1980s. A person currently caught with 5 grams of crack cocaine would get the same five-year sentence as a person caught with 500 grams of powder, a 100-to-1 ratio.
The Senate, by the narrowest of margins - 50 to 49 - voted to reduce the ratio to 10 to 1. But Gore said that is not enough.
''The remaining disparities should be dealt with,'' Gore said Wednesday in a teleconference interview with the Trotter Group, an organization of African-American columnists. ''I respect the views of the law enforcement professionals who argue that there is some justification, but I don't see it myself.''
There is a good reason that Gore sees no justification for any disparities, disparities that helped fuel the astronomical explosion in the black prison population over the last 15 years. There are none. Medical research has found no or extremely little difference in the pharmacology of crack and powder. There was never any proof that crack caused 10 times more crime, let alone 100.
Instead, the laws were passed during a period of mass hysteria, a frenzy that was fed with the stereotype that crack was a ''black'' street drug. It did not matter that federal statistics said over and over that between 52 and 63 percent of the users of crack were actually white. Law enforcement cracked down almost exclusively on black inner-city neighborhoods. Despite the fact that nearly two-thirds of crack's users are white, 84 percent of those sentenced in federal courts for crack were African-American.
The 100-to-1 law became the top symbol of racism for a criminal injustice system that made the so-called war on drugs a war on African-Americans.
Even though African-Americans consume merely their fair share of illegal drugs, 13 percent, they make up 35 percent of those arrested for possession, 55 percent of those convicted, and 74 percent of those sentenced to prison.
It is enough for Gore to say in general on Wednesday that the so-called war on drugs ''certainly hasn't succeeded,'' and that future progress will be made if Congress's formula for funding the war moves away from the two-thirds prosecution and prisons and one-third treatment and prevention to something more balanced.
On an issue disparaged by many Republicans and given lip service by President Clinton, Gore said it is a ''disgrace'' that people seeking drug treatment find it tragically hard to get.
According to federal statistics, 57 percent of all inmates in state prisons used drugs in the month before their arrest. Yet the percentage of prisoners in drug treatment has dropped from an already woeful one in four inmates in 1991 to one in 10 in 1997. The percentage of federal prisoners in drug treatment has been cut by nearly half, from 15.7 percent in 1991 to 9.7 percent in 1997.
It is too early to know how hard Gore will push such issues in a political world that punishes candidates who are seen as soft on crime.
In interviews with the Trotter Group in 1995 and 1997, Clinton acknowledged the disparities in the crack laws but did not challenge the Republicans to eliminate them. Instead, Attorney General Janet Reno proposed reducing the 100-to-1 ratio to the 10 to 1 that the Senate has approved, a ratio which would still disproportionately imprison African-American offenders.
At least Gore seems to be staking out a higher ground. Talking about the crack versus powder laws, he said, ''I would start from the assumption that they ought to be equal, and I think the burden of proof should be borne by those who say they should not be equal.''
Had such proof been demanded a decade ago, we might have avoided the tragedy of watching a city's worth of people being hauled off to jail, mainly on nonviolent possession charges. The percentage of drug offenders in state prisons has grown from 6 percent in 1980 to 25 percent. The percentage of drug offenders in federal prisons has exploded from 25 percent in 1980 to 60 percent today. Sometime next year, the prison population will cross the 2 million mark, four times the number in 1980.
Reversing this crisis will be an important and unpopular task for the next president. Gore, like Clinton, has often been tagged as an incrementalist, tinkering with issues but rarely pressing for wholesale change. Eliminating the crack disparities and sharply increasing the funds for drug treatment would be a sign that the tinkering is over and Gore has put the burden of proof on the forces of injustice. He would be telling the nation that the fear of being soft on crime will not scare him away from being fair on crime.
Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist.
