On his 100th day in office, President Obama and his administration teamed with federal judges to call upon congress for fairer sentencing laws in the disparity that exist between cocaine powder and crack cocaine dealing penalties. Currently, someone must be convicted of dealing 100 times more cocaine powder, by weight, to receive the same mandatory minimum sentence, if they had been dealing crack. The example given at the meeting was that fifty grams of crack would trigger the cureent10 year mandatory minimum sentence, while it would take 5000 grams (five kilos) of powered cocaine to warrant the same penalty.

The original strict sentencing laws for crack as part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Acts were created in 1986 and 1988, at the peak of the crack epidemic that was sweeping the US. For years, people have argued that the discrepancy in sentencing was a racial issue as far more African-Americans are arrested for crack than cocaine powder, while the majority of people arrested for the powder form are Anglo. According to the Huffington Post, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration reported that “While two-thirds of crack cocaine users are white or Latino, more than 80 percent of those convicted in federal court for crack cocaine offenses in 2006 were African American.”

According to AP reports, one the federal judges officials on hand, Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer, urged the US Congress to overhaul the current law, by testifying that they should “completely eliminate the disparity,” and added, “A growing number of citizens view it as fundamentally unfair.” As it stands, the Justice Department is currently working on new sentencing laws, based on recommendations, which would be more equal in the punishments dealt.