When then-Senator Joe Biden floated a brutal punishment for people found to be possessing crack cocaine, he likely had no idea that his son would seemingly run afoul of the proposal with such magnitude that it would have put him away for decades.
The so-called “100-1” rule, a standard for which Biden would years later claim responsibility, was a provision in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 that required a minimum five-year sentence for those caught with over 500 grams of cocaine. For the drug’s crack form, the ratio was even more punishing, with only five grams needed in possession to catch the 5-year mandatory sentence.
Biden later disavowed the strict provision and worked toward its eventual softening in 2010, but his leading role in the villainization of crack users has now come back to the forefront after an alleged hack of his son’s iCloud account.
“Many of the materials posted by [alleged hackers] match the contents the Washington Examiner previously found on a password-protected iPhone XS backup located on a copy of Hunter’s abandoned laptop,” according to the Washington Examiner.
“Konstantinos ‘Gus’ Dimitrelos, a former Secret Service agent-turned-cyber forensics expert, located the password to the iPhone backup during his examination of the hard drive. Dimitrelos previously told the Washington Examiner that the data found within the password-protected iPhone backup is indisputably authentic.”
The cloud account further revealed the out-of-control antics of Hunter Biden, including a video in which the future presidential son is seen weighing what appears to be crack cocaine.
On the scale, Hunter and his unknown female companion weigh out a little over 20 grams of the apparent drug.
The scene seems to be the result of some argument between the two about the quantity of drugs present. Hunter decided to film the encounter, which would later lead to its inclusion in the most recent alleged hack. The clip can be seen below.
Let’s do some quick math.
Was the punishment devised by Joe Biden cruel?
Using the elder Biden’s 1-gram-to-1-year standard for this illegal substance, the punishment for Hunter under his dad’s championed bill would have put him away for decades.
Considering Hunter Biden lost his Navy commission after cocaine use and has a known history of struggling with the addictive drug, it seems any chances at parole or a lighter sentence probably wouldn’t have fared well under his dad’s original law.
Although Joe Biden disavowed the law’s strict punishment while on the presidential trail under both Barack Obama and during his own campaign years later, his enthusiasm for it impacted countless lives and left an unmistakable mark on our prison system.
In 1991, Biden even bragged about the severity of his punishing provision, gleefully explaining just how it would ruin and end lives.
“If you have a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand,” a smiling Biden said, “one quarter of one dollar, we passed a law — with leadership of Sen. Thurmond and myself and others — a law that says: you’re caught with that, you go to jail for five years.”
“You get no probation, you get nothing, other than five years in jail. Judge doesn’t have a choice.”
“If you have a piece of crack cocaine no bigger than this quarter that I’m holding in my hand, one quarter of one dollar, we passed a law with leadership of Sen Thurmond and myself and others a law that says you’re caught with that you go to jail for 5 years”
– Biden 6/20/1991 pic.twitter.com/xuKGEtOMQT
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) March 4, 2020
While the ultra-strict measure is now stripped from the law, the impact it had on American families will continue to be felt for decades more.
The United States Sentencing Commission specifically cited the lopsided ratios championed by Biden as a cause of a massive racial disparity in drug-crime sentencing.
In “Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy,” the commission found that the difference in severity between punishments for crack and powder cocaine was “a primary cause of the growing disparity between sentences for black and white federal defendants.”
Thankfully for both Hunter and every other American struggling with this addiction, Joe Biden’s obsessive jihad against drug users has been tempered.
In an ironic twist, now-President Joe Biden is more apt to give crack addicts a pipe than a stiff prison sentence.
