Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court injected some reason into the debate over alleged racial disparity in sentencing for crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine. The justices let stand the 10-year prison sentence of Duane Edwards, a black man convicted for selling 126 grams of crack to an undercover officer for $3,400. Edwards's lawyers had argued that their client was a victim of discrimination because a conviction for the sale of an equal amount (in weight, not dollars) of powdered cocaine -- a drug preferred by non-minorities -- would have garnered a lighter sentence.

Prison reformers and advocates of drug legalization have played this race card in an effort to divide and conquer those who demand that drug traffickers be held accountable for their crimes. Unfortunately, two prominent black leaders, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rep. Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.), have bought into this scam and declared the sentencing laws racist.

Yet Messrs. Jackson and Rangel held a news conference in 1986 demanding that the

federal government do something about the crack epidemic that was raging through inner-city neighborhoods. They understood that the introduction of this cheap, rapidly addicting form of cocaine posed a particular danger to the weakest denizens of those areas. Mr. Rangel, in fact, voted for the statute imposing tougher sentences for crack cocaine. Now, it appears that these two gentlemen have forgotten whence the statute came.

The crack cocaine law is not racist. It was enacted to permit federal agents to lend their enforcement efforts to combatting the growing crack cocaine menace. Most drug investigations are conducted by local law enforcement officers functioning under state laws. In instances where the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration gets involved, intelligence denoting the relative significance of the trafficker or organization, in addition to the actual and potential violence of the drug-trafficking organization, is a vital consideration in targeting a particular group.

Crack, which is smoked rather than snorted, is far cheaper and more rapidly addictive than powder cocaine, and it renders its users more prone to violence. The only effective way to combat it is by going after the retail end of the market. With powder cocaine, on the other hand, the federal government generally reserves its limited resources for wholesale operations. That's why cases involving wholesale distributors of powder cocaine normally involve multiple kilograms of the drug, while crack cocaine cases generally are measured in grams. The average amount of powder cocaine per inmate in federal prison on a powder cocaine violation is about 183 pounds. The average amount of crack cocaine per convict is about 700 grams, which converts to approximately 7,000 "rocks" (dosages), hardly the stock of a small-time pusher or addict.

There has been a great deal of sophistry in the discussion of the relative sentences for crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine. In truth, the sentencing statute doesn't impose longer sentences for crack cocaine. Rather, it establishes a lower weight threshold to get to an equivalent sentence for crack cocaine as compared with powder cocaine. It is predicated on the relative importance of the defendant in the phase of the market in which he operates. If federal agents were subject to the same quantity thresholds for crack cocaine investigations as they are for powder, they simply wouldn't be able to work the retail crack market.

In the Southern District of Florida, for example, the threshold for powder cocaine cases is three kilograms. The same amount of crack is the equivalent of 30,000 rocks. It is unlikely that a crack cocaine dealer would ever have sufficient quantity to meet such a threshold.

Do tough crack sentences discriminate against blacks? Consider: A comprehensive 1991 study revealed that of 2,980 federal crack cocaine prisoners, 2,513 (84%) were black and 467 were non-black. (The most recent figure available for the number of federal prisoners incarcerated for crack charges is 3,771 -- out of roughly 100,000 total federal prisoners--in 1995.) Crack defendants are a small percentage of drug criminals behind federal bars. The same 1991 study found that there were 16,528 federal powder cocaine prisoners, of whom only 4,439 (27%) were black. And of 6,015 federal prisoners serving time for marijuana charges, only 442 (8%) were black.

Do these numbers reflect discrimination against the non-black marijuana and powder cocaine criminals? Or is it simply reflective of who is involved at the upper levels of organizations trafficking in each of these drugs? (The average amount of marijuana involved for a federal marijuana prisoners is over three tons of the drug.) And the most important question is this: Why are we focussing all this time and energy on the "plight" of drug criminals? The object of our efforts and devotion should be the victims of crack cocaine -- children who are seduced by it or addicted even before birth, and law abiding citizens whose communities are devastated by its effects--not those who profit by the misery and harm they visit on our society. (Published Edited - Wall Street Journal - April 29, 1997, by Wayne J. Roques. Mr. Roques is a retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent.)