Quote:
Originally Posted by Temporary_User
I don't think that part is technically correct. It's not a federal vs state law thing, it's a felony vs misdemeanor thing. You lose your voting ability if you are charged with a felony and employers are able to ask if you've ever been charged with a felony.
Most drug crimes are felonies though. Having a small amount of drugs on you is typically a misdemeaner. Having a lot, selling. or making the drugs is almost always a felony.
http://norml.org/laws/item/federal-penalties-2
http://adplegal.com/practice-areas/n...crime-lawyers/ |
Great add on.
Here's just another piece of information.
While most possession of small amounts can be considered a misdemeanor, possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine was a mandatory minimum of 5 years in prison, the equivalent of 500 grams of powdered cocaine.
This is a law explicitly designed to target urban black communities.
I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but the Fair Sentencing Act was the first law to address this since 1986, and it happened to be signed into law by a black president, while the unnecessarily punitive policy was signed into law by a racist...
Quote:
|
"The penalty for possession of a saccharin package worth of crack cocaine is a five-year mandatory minimum. And it goes up from there astronomically to where you're at a life sentence before you can bat an eye with crack cocaine," she said, "Whereas you have to have 5 kilos of powder cocaine, so it's literally 100 times more severe penalty for the same amount of drug."
|
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=124795401