Twenty-two years ago this week, pro basketball player Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. His death stunned the sports world and left an indelible mark on our justice system.

In the months following his death, Congress passed harsh new mandatory minimum drug-sentencing laws that set a 100-to-1 disparity between the amount of crack cocaine and powder cocaine that trigger the same five-year mandatory prison sentence. The result: one-size-fits-all sentencing, regardless of an individual's role in the case.

We punish low-level drug users and dealers the same or worse than the drug kingpins mandatory sentences were intended to catch. Crack-cocaine offenders serve sentences up to eight times longer than those sentenced for powder cocaine. African-Americans account for 80 percent of those serving time for crack offenses, even though they make up less than one-third of crack cocaine users.

By continuing to lock away first-time and nonviolent crack cocaine offenders for extraordinarily long sentences instead of treating the problem, we are repeating the mistake, not the lesson, of Len Bias' story.

We are repeating a tale of lost promise.

In recent months, we have seen a new effort among the courts, the public and even among some of our politicians to rewrite the ending for these prisoners. What is Congress waiting for?

Cheryl Williams, Augusta