'X' Traffickers to Get Stiffer Penalties
March 20 -- Traffickers of the hallucinogenic "club drug" ecstasy will face tougher penalties under guidelines issued today by the U.S. Sentencing Commission.
The panel voted unanimously in Washington to advise federal judges to equate 1 gram of ecstasy, or MDMA, with 500 grams, or half a kilogram, of marijuana when considering sentences for traffickers.
Until now, each gram of seized ecstasy has been treated as the equivalent of 35 grams of marijuana.
So ecstasy is being treated as more serious than marijuana, but less than, say, heroin. Federal sentencing guidelines equate 1 gram of heroin with 1 kilogram of marijuana.
"[Trafficking ecstasy] is now serious business," said Judge Joe Kendall, a Sentencing Commission member."What we are voting on here is to raise penalties for ecstasy distribution by in excess of 15 times what it currently is."
Judge Ruben Castillo, another commission member, said the tougher guidelines are necessary because ecstasy's popularity has increased dramatically in recent years, particularly among young people.
"This particular drug is abused by our nation's youth," he said. "That is important because that strikes at the very heart of our country and of what we need to do to try to regulate what could be an epidemic problem."
Under the new rule, which takes effect May 1, a person caught with 800 pills, or about 200 grams, could get a maximum five years in prison. Under the current guidelines, it takes 11,000 pills or more to get a person five years in jail.
The commission will convene later to vote on a permanent guideline.
Popular 'Club Drugs'
The new guideline comes in response to the federal Ecstasy Anti-Proliferation Act of 2000, passed by Congress because legislators believed punishment levels for ecstasy were too low, particularly for high level traffickers, said Donald Purdy, the commission's chief deputy general counsel.
Originally, the commission had considered a proposal making 1 gram of ecstasy equal to 1 kilogram of marijuana, but today's decision was a compromise after considering expert opinion and literature raised questions about the effects of ecstasy on the body.
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