By Jeremy B. White, Sacramento Bee

The first time Maria Alexander’s drug addiction caught up to her, the reckoning came in the form of a small chunk of crack cocaine that sent her to jail for six months.

The next time, after a small amount of heroin – “scrapings on a spoon,” Alexander recalled – earned her another stint in the correctional system, she sought treatment.

“I was no big drug dealer,” Alexander said. “I was a big user.”

In an announcement hailed as a sea change for the decades-old federal war on drugs, Attorney General Eric Holder said last week that he would direct federal prosecutors to avoid charging low-level drug offenders in ways that carry “draconian” minimum sentences.

“By reserving the most severe penalties for serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers, we can better promote public safety, deterrence, and rehabilitation while making our expenditures smarter and more productive,” Holder told a San Francisco gathering of the American Bar Association last week.

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