The inequities of crack-versus-powder-cocaine sentencing have become the focus of intense national debate. Those involving LSD sentencing are only now coming to light, thanks to a case (Neal v. U.S.) now being argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. PNS correspondents Dennis Bernstein and Thea Kelley report on the issues raised by the case.

The Supreme Court has just heard arguments in a case that challenges the law under which sentences for LSD are computed by weighing the drug along with its "carrier medium." Some 2,000 people are currently serving long prison terms based in part on having possessed and distributed paper, sugar and water along with minuscule amounts of LSD.

While the inequities of crack-versus-powder-cocaine sentencing have gained national notoriety, those involving LSD sentences are less well known. The U.S. Sentencing Commission has concluded that LSD is less dangerous than cocaine, heroin or PCP. Yet only one dose of LSD on a sugar cube, or 125 doses on paper, carries the same five-year sentence as several thousand doses of far more toxic substances. Many LSD prisoners -- young, nonviolent first time offenders -- are serving longer prison terms (ten years or more) than the average sentences for manslaughter, assault, armed robbery or rape.

In the case of Neal v. U.S. now before the Supreme Court, Meril Gilbert Neal pleaded guilty in 1989 to conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute a little more than half a gram of pure LSD. He was sentenced to a minimum of 15 years based on possession of 109.51 grams, reflecting the added weight of the carrier medium. (The sentenced was later reduced to ten years based on minor changes in sentencing guidelines by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.)

Eric Sterling, former counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, helped write the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which created mandatory minimum sentences based on weight. Sterling, currently president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation in Washington, D.C., now calls the law "frighteningly unjust" and says Congress's primary aim when it rushed to pass the legislation was "to vaccinate the Democrats against soft-on-crime charges after Reagan had pounded them on the issue in '84."

LSD received scant attention in the drafting of the law, Sterling concedes. LSD users -- typically young Grateful Dead fans -- simply became an easy target for law enforcement agencies desperate to look like they were having some success in the drug war.

"The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is a bureaucracy that has to prove itself constantly, year by year, to an electorate, to taxpayers," concurs Michael Levine, a 25 year veteran of the DEA who now works for the city of Cape Cod, Mass. "They do that by numbers of arrests and by racking up the extraordinarily long sentences common with LSD."

Ironically, despite the fact that the DEA budget for LSD has tripled since 1989, the agency has failed to bust a major LSD lab since 1981.

One case that sticks in Sterling's craw is that of Nicole Richardson, now serving a ten-year sentence for conspiracy to distribute LSD. Richardson was 20 years old and living with her boyfriend Jeff, a small-time LSD dealer. An informant called their home and asked where he could find Jeff. She knew the caller wished to buy LSD and she answered his question. "That was her entire involvement in the conspiracy," says Sterling. Nevertheless, Nicole was sentenced to ten years based on the quantity of the boyfriend's subsequent drug deal. Her boyfriend, meanwhile, helped the prosecutor with other drug busts, and got off with five years.

If the Neal case is successful, LSD sentences will be calculated regardless of the carrier medium, using a standardized weight of .4 mgs. per dose. This is less than the weight of a dose on blotter paper, but still eight times greater than pure LSD at the DEA's official dosage unit of .05 mgs.

Sentences will still be too harsh, says Julie Stewart, president of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, which has filed an amicus brief in support of the appeal. But a victory in the Neal case "could still make a dramatic difference for many people."

One of those who may be directly affected is the brother-in-law of Donald Bergerson, the San Francisco attorney who argued the Neal case before the Court. "Stanley Marshall's case is a tragedy, as all these LSD cases are," says Bergerson. "Here you've got a first offender with no prior record ending up with a 20-year sentence, which has now been mercifully reduced to ten, for selling less than a gram of pure LSD."