Biden commutes roughly 2,500 drug offenders’ sentences

U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday that he has handed out more pardons and sentence commutations than any other president in American history. The roughly 2,500 non-violent drug offenders who Friday morning benefited from Biden’s most recent sentence commutations were serving out disproportionately longer sentences than they would have received if sentenced for the same crimes today.

What sorts of laws are we talking about? Many of the offenders in question received harsher penalties at the time of their sentencing because of now-discredited distinctions the law made between crack and powder cocaine, Biden said. Offenses involving crack cocaine used to receive longer sentences than offenses involving powder cocaine, according to the Justice Department.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in 2022 ordered prosecutors not to abide by those distinctions. Science no longer supports the theory that crack cocaine is somehow more harmful than powder cocaine, Garland said. In cases involving crack cocaine, prosecutors should opt for the lighter sentencing recommendations that would apply if the substance was powder cocaine, the attorney general said.

Dig deeper: Read Addie Offereins’ report about how monster opioids—that make fentanyl look tame—are now on the prowl in U.S. streets.