We did our last update on President Obama's campaign promise to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for crack and cocaine on July 14, 2010. For the past two decades, possession of five grams of crack cocaine triggered an automatic five-year prison sentence. Because of the so-called 100-to-1 ratio, it would take five hundred grams of cocaine powder to trigger the same sentence. Obama said that this disparity "has disproportionately filled our prison with young black and Latino drug users," and he promised to change it once in office.

When we last reviewed this campaign pledge, we rated it In the Works, but recent Congressional action prompted us to reassess the rating once again.

On March 17, 2010, the Senate passed a bill that would reduce the cocaine-crack disparity ratio from 100-to-1 to 18-to-1. Introduced by the Illinois Democrat Richard Durbin, the bill initially called for a 1-to-1 ratio, but that was changed after negotiations in the Senate Judiciary Committee. At the time of our last update, a bill was pending in the House that would have reduced the ratio to 1-to-1, and would have eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. On July 28, 2010, however, House lawmakers agreed to pass a bill that only reduced the disparity; it did not completely eliminate it. The final version of the bill also repealed the mandatory minimum sentence for first-time offenders convicted of simple possession of crack cocaine. President Obama signed the bill into law on August 3, 2010.

Julie Stewart, founder and President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a drug policy advocacy group, said that "members of both parties deserve enormous credit for moving beyond the politics of fear and simply doing the right thing."

President Obama promised to eliminate the disparity in sentencing for crack and cocaine. He also promised to repeal the mandatory minimum sentence for crack possession. He followed through on the second part of the promise, but the disparity was only reduced; it was not eliminated. We rate this Compromise.