DrugPolicyCases.com | |||
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Drugs: Types, Dosages, Effects Does it matter what illicit drug is implicated in the decision? Are all controlled substances equal? How is the weight of the drug calculated? Does it matter whether it may have a legitimate use? Any court language that attempts a nuanced discussion of the substances in question can be found in this section.
Undoubtedly, Congress intended to punish drug traffickers severely, and in particular, Congress intended to punish those who sell large quantities of drugs more severely than those who sell small quantities. [...] Instead of punishing more severely those who sell large quantities of LSD, the Court would punish more severely those who sell small quantities of LSD in weighty carriers, and instead of sentencing in comparable ways those who sell different types of drugs, the Court would sentence those who sell LSD to longer terms than those who sell proportionately equivalent quantities of other equally dangerous drugs.
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In Hutto v. Davis, 454 U.S., 370 (1982), we upheld against proportionality attack a sentence of 40 years' imprisonment for possession with intent to distribute nine ounces of marijuana. Here, Michigan could with good reason conclude that petitioner's crime is more serious than the crime in Davis. Similarly, a rational basis exists for Michigan to conclude that petitioner's crime is as serious and violent as the crime of felony murder without specific intent to kill, a crime for which "no sentence of imprisonment would be disproportionate," Solem, 463 U.S., at 290, n. 15.
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Petitioner was convicted of possession of more than 650 grams (over 1.5 pounds) of cocaine. This amount of pure cocaine has a potential yield of between 32,500 and 65,000 doses. [...] Possession, use, and distribution of illegal drugs represents "one of the greatest problems affecting the health and welfare of our population." Treasury Employees v. Von Raab, 489 U.S. 656, 668 (1989). Petitioner's suggestion that his crime was nonviolent and victimless, echoed by the dissent, is false to the point of absurdity. To the contrary, petitioner's crime threatened to cause grave harm to society.
Quite apart from the pernicious effects on the individual who consumes illegal drugs, such drugs relate to crime in at least three ways: (1) A drug user may commit crime because of drug-induced changes in physiological functions, cognitive ability, and mood; (2) A drug user may commit crime in order to obtain money to buy drugs; and (3) A violent crime may occur as part of the drug business or culture. See Goldstein, Drugs and Violent Crime, in Pathways to Criminal Violence 16, 24-36 (N. Weiner, M. Wolfgang eds., 1989). Studies bear out these possibilities, and demonstrate a direct nexus between illegal drugs and crimes of violence. [...]To mention but a few examples, 57 percent of a national sample of males arrested in 1989 for homicide tested positive for illegal drugs. [...] These and other facts and reports detailing the pernicious effects of the drug epidemic in this country do not establish that Michigan's penalty scheme is correct or the most just in any abstract sense. But they do demonstrate that the Michigan Legislature could with reason conclude that the threat posed to the individual and society by possession of this large an amount of cocaine -- in terms of violence, crime, and social displacement -- is momentous enough to warrant the deterrence and retribution of a life sentence without parole. [...]
Infants whose mothers abuse cocaine during pregnancy are born with a wide variety of physical and neurological abnormalities. See Chiriboga, Brust, Bateman, & Hauser, Dose-Response Effect of Fetal Cocaine Exposure on Newborn Neurologic Function, 103 Pediatrics 79 (1999) (finding that, compared with unexposed infants, cocaine-exposed infants experienced higher rates of intrauterine growth retardation, smaller head circumference, global hypertonia, coarse tremor, and extensor leg posture). Prenatal exposure to cocaine can also result in developmental problems which persist long after birth. See Arendt, Angelopoulos, Salvator, & Singer, Motor Development of Cocaine-exposed Children at Age Two Years, 103 Pediatrics 86 (1999) (concluding that, at two years of age, children who were exposed to cocaine in utero exhibited significantly less fine and gross motor development than those not so exposed); Chasnoff et al., Prenatal Exposure to Cocaine and Other Drugs: Outcome at Four to Six Years, 846 Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 314, 319-320 (J. Harvey and B. Kosofsky eds. 1998) (finding that four to six year olds who were exposed to cocaine in utero exhibit higher instances of depression, anxiety, social, thought, and attention problems, and delinquent and aggressive behaviors than their unexposed counterparts).
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Several Courts of Appeals [for the Third, Sixth and the Eleventh Circuits] [held] that sentencing calculations may not be based on the total weight of mixtures containing uningestable "waste" material.
Several other Courts of Appeals [for the First, Fifth, Ninth, and the Tenth Circuits] [...] have taken a contrary approach. [...]
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