Another look at drug weight
In 1993, FAMM and other groups urged the U.S. Sentencing Commission to correct the manner in which marijuana plants are weighed under the sentencing guidelines. In 1995, the sentencing commission unanimously adopted a new method that better reflects the actual weight of each marijuana plant and made the change retroactive. As a result, some 80 prisoners walked out of prison on the day the change became effective, another 900 became eligible for sentence reductions, and future defendants were assured of less severe marijuana sentences.21
Sentencing commission recommends change
Crack and powder cocaine are different forms of the same substance, yet they are sentenced very differently. Five hundred grams of powder cocaine and five grams of crack carry or trigger the same five-year penalty. This difference is referred to as the 100:1 ratio. In 1995, the U.S. Sentencing Commission published a 240-page report on powder and crack cocaine. The commission found that the two drugs did not merit the 100:1 sentencing differential and three months later it recommended that crack penalties should be the same as those for powder cocaine. The commission asked Congress to make this change apply to both the guidelines and mandatory sentences.
The Senate and House each held hearings on the issue in 1995, at which FAMM member Dr. Arthur Curry and others testified. But, in the end, Congress rejected the commission's crack recommendation, setting off a string of uprisings in federal prisons around the country.
In response to the rebuke from Congress, the U.S. Sentencing Commission adopted a self-imposed one-year moratorium on guideline changes. And it went back to the drawing board on crack sentencing policy. Members of Congress asked the commission to find another solution to the crack/powder disparity. Shortly after that, a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that crack cocaine and powder cocaine is the same drug and that crack penalties should be changed.