Those infamous 'carrier weight' LSD laws where the weight of what the single drop of LSD is on counts as part of the drug in calculating the sentencing. And it's not even the dumbest 'war on drugs' law in our arsenal of dumb 'war on drugs' laws.
There is a nice scene in the documentary "Le route de l'opium", where they interview, I believe the guy responsible for europol drugwar coordination. They ask why the laws and system are like this if they are so incredibly stupid and not working.
His answer: Because this is the way many individuals earn the most money with it. Change anything and manufacturers, dealers, corrupt politicians etc. would lose money.
What would be truly cynical is to believe it's pragmatic, and not just dumb.
Similarly, LSD was widely associated with undesirables in the sixties and seventies--counter-culture movements. Do you have a better way to provide yourself with cover for attacking them?
If you're surprised or skeptical of either claim, I recommend you read Dan Baum's recent report regarding his discussions with John Erlichman and H.R. Haldeman's diaries[1] (themselves available in the Nixon Presidential Library). Both men were deep in the Nixon White House during the formation of the War on Drugs; it's illuminating stuff.
[0] - http://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/?single=1
[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/18/us/haldeman-diary-shows-ni...
Even in the LSD example, someone using a fancier stationary could be way more guilty than a cheapo two ply. The whole thing is ridiculous in ways the crack vs cocaine thing is relatively less so. If anything, this law encourages lsd to be made on the most portable medium possible. If you claim this too was intentional, then we enter the realm of the ridiculous.
This might sound like splitting hairs, but I'm just advocating to a caveat to cynicism for things once in awhile being just flat out dumb.
It's comforting to think it's all just a ploy to get at black people (like how cannabis was rebranded as "marijuana" because it associates it with those pesky Mexicans everybody hates) but there are valid reasons to be more afraid of crack than of cocaine despite both sharing practically the same active ingredient.
EDIT: I'm not saying the War on Drugs doesn't particularly affect people of color more than other groups, or whether that is intentional or not, but pointing at the active ingredients and saying "look, they're the same except racism" is simplistic.
Nobody has said they're 100% the same besides racism. The claim is that racism plays a role in why the sentencing disparities exist.
http://prisontime.org/2013/08/12/timeline-black-support-for-...
http://www.wnyc.org/story/312823-black-leaders-once-champion...
I'm not arguing that institutionalized racism doesn't exist, but this crack vs cocaine issue comes up all the time and the issue has more to it than "It's because of racism."
The issue is, might_atomic says he is cynical that the reason the law is the case isn't dumb, it's intentional. If we're being cynical, I can think of many ways to be extra punitive against any particular drug you like for any reason. Even if we assume self-aggrandizement, my assumption was we could all be fall more cynically creative as to how a drug enforcement agency could get than arguing about the weight of paper.
For example, why not just call all the precursor chemicals drug as well, we could say they produced 50lbs of lsd because of the running water used in the process.
I'm just advocating for a level of cynicism that looks at a bigger picture to where once in awhile we could say something is dumber than it is insidious. Without doing so, I think it contributes to the persistence of laws that are in fact dumber than even their creators intended.
While I don't believe that non-violent drug offenders should be locked up for life, this individual failed to appreciate the gravity of being arrested for the serious offense of distribution on two prior occasions! To add to the stupidity , the Seth Faranti case was a huge cause célèbre in 1993 and he was put away for life. It was well known at the time that the Feds were taking a serious view of LSD distribution and were targeting Deadshows. Yet he continued his disregard for consequences well into 1994.
LSD is not physically addictive so this is not like someone who became physically addicted and was arrested as a recidivist offender as a result. This was someone who was financing a lifestyle by selling acid. There were plenty of other Deadheads that financed their road trips without selling drugs. It was a choice he made on at least three different occasions.
While I believe the war drugs is indeed dumb, getting arrested for the same serious crime three times is even dumber.
There is a difference between making a mistake in ones youth and throwing your life away.
Yes, doses are in the order of 100-150 micrograms, for a basic dose. 100ug will do as an approximation.
How many doses of 100ug are there in 1g? Oooh... About 10,000.
So yes, 1g of crystal is a substantial amount, that's the point. Compared to a handful of doses on a gram of paper, it makes a mockery of the law if I were to be charged the same way whichever of the two I was carrying.
(Of course the law is an ass anyway, where it comes to drugs)
The gram of paper is still mostly paper. Sure it could have varying amounts of actual acid on it, but still mostly paper.
it would be like if the ml in alcohol were measured along with the glass bottle it comes in - and something with low alcohol volume (say beer) would get you just as much time as a 100 proof whiskey or moonshine.
So when the law is trying to decide how much of a threat the contraband is to society the potential damage of a sheet of acid us much much greater than a hit or a couple of hits(smaller pieces of paper.)
What are you proposing that the acid be recovered from the paper? What would that do? There's no threshold below which you are permitted to posses lysergic acid in the United States.
Legislate penalty by doses if you want, but the fact remains that someone with ten mg of crystal is carrying with them just as many doses as someone carrying a few g of blotters.
This is not true. I can take a clean sheet of paper and dissolve as much LSD (or as little) on it as desired. 1g of near-pure crystal will definitely contain thousands of doses. 1g of paper could contain anything from 0, 1, 10, or 100 doses or more.
Your example with cocaine is a good one, people caught with cocaine aren't carrying pure cocaine either. They are usually charged with the weight of the cutting agent as well, which in my view is equally stupid. If you have a pound of baking soda with 1gm of cocaine mixed in it, you shouldn't be charged with having a pound of cocaine.
I'm not saying it can't happen, its just not very common. The culture where acid is prevalent is much more communal.
According, to the studies shown here on erowid, the blotter tabs examined by labs since '97 range anywhere from 19 micrograms all the way up to 148 micrograms. The older lab tests from the 70s and 80s seem to have a greater range testing at anywhere from 5 micrograms to 500 micrograms per tab!
All of these blotter tabs are going to weigh roughly the same amount. Some of the weaker ones may even weigh more than the stronger ones due to the difference in the type of paper.