Cracked Obsession
April, 1995
The equal-protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to protect blacks in the aftermath of the Civil War. In recent years, there has been no clearer violation of the spirit, as well as the letter, of that amendment than in the way our drug laws are written and enforced.This is obvious in the sharp differences in the penalties meted out for crack as opposed to cocaine powder. Crack, formed by boiling cocaine powder with baking soda, is a drug used mostly by blacks, who, according...
