The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act encoded a 100-to-1 crack-powder sentencing disparity

Evidence

Under Ronald Reagan, the War on Drugs went into overdrive. In the 1980s, Congress passed several laws under the guise of fighting this so-called war. First, the 1984 Comprehensive Crime Control and Safe Streets Act eliminated parole in the federal system. Two years later the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act established mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenses, including the hundred-to-one ratio between crack and powder cocaine sentences. In other words, the amount of crack cocaine required to trigger the minimum sentencing guidelines was one hundred times less than the amount of powder cocaine required for a minimum sentence. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 411

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Crack cocaine sentencing disparity is racially discriminatory in practice — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1231