Mandatory minimum sentences are controversial now, but they became federal law 15 years ago with almost no opposition.

The year was 1986. "Top Gun" was at the box office. "The Cosby Show" was on television, and a deep fear of drugs gripped the country. Americans told pollsters that the number one problem facing the nation, more than nuclear war, more than the economy, was illegal drug use. Specifically, they were concerned about crack, a new form of cocaine popularized in urban areas but spreading quickly to the suburbs.

	A baby born addicted to drugs is comforted by a caregiver.

With headlines like "Cocaine Wars" and "Epidemic," newspapers and magazines chronicled crack's arrival. The drug was cheap, highly addictive and turned users into violent zombies who would do anything, from turning tricks to murder, to get a rock of the drug.

"This was the drug that was going to destroy America. People smoke crack and then go chop people's heads off," said Steven Belenko, a fellow at the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse.

The public learned a whole new vocabulary: crack whores, crack pipes, crack houses and crack babies. The latter were called the drug's youngest victims, born premature and addicted, unable to love or bond, and destined, the articles said, to become a generation of "superpredators."

"There were these stories of women giving birth and then abandoning their babies to go buy crack. The neonatal wards were supposedly overflowing," said Eric Sterling, who helped write the mandatory minimum laws in the '80s but now opposes them. "Crack was called a scourge, a plague. The statistic three thousand children are trying crack every day was thrown out there."

Crack emerged too quickly for thorough studies with hard numbers.

"It was certainly a strong drug which caused a lot of problems but the prevalence of the problem was blown out of proportion. There were lots of anecdotes, but not a lot of data," said Belenko.

	Len Bias' death shocked the country.

The most persuasive anecdote of all came June 19 when basketball star Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose. Bias, the Boston Celtics first-round draft pick, was just 22 and shortly before his death had signed a million-dollar endorsement contract with Reebok. Those who watched him play at the University of Maryland said his only equal was another young prospect, Michael Jordan.

The death of someone so young with such a promising future reinforced the idea that the country was under assault by drugs. Congressional representatives returning to their districts to campaign over summer break got an earful from concerned voters. The outrage was especially great in Boston, the home of House Speaker Tip O'Neill, and when the Congress reconvened, drug legislation was a priority.

The push for tougher laws came from both sides of the aisle and from the White House where President Ronald Reagan and his wife Nancy personally appealed to the country to join the "crusade" against drugs. In a nationally televised address from the couple's private living room, Nancy Reagan, the undisputed leader of the anti-drug effort, urged children to "just say 'no' to drugs."

	Ronald and Nancy Reagan made the drug war a personal crusade.

"There is no moral middle ground," she said.

Americans were very receptive to the idea that there was no such thing as casual drug use, that people were either strongly against drugs or part of the problem. And that toughness was reflected on Capitol Hill. The entire House was up for reelection in November and representatives wanted new drug laws to hold up to voters. They worked at a breakneck pace, sending the $1.7 billion Anti-Drug Abuse Act to the president for signature by the end of October. In addition to funding drug-treatment programs and interdiction programs at U.S. borders, the law created mandatory minimum sentences for certain federal drug offenses.

"The general mindset was we've got to arrest these people because they are dangerous and a menace to society," said Belenko.

Prior to the law, federal judges had discretion, but the new statutes dictated the minimum sentence allowed. For example, anyone convicted of a drug offense involving five grams of crack or 500 grams of powder cocaine automatically got at least five years in prison. Fifty grams of crack or 5,000 grams of cocaine meant a minimum of 10 years. The amount of the drug, rather than the convict's role or past criminal history, governed the sentence.

Sterling, who helped write the law as assistant general counsel to the House Judicial Committee, said the pressure to take quick, hard-line action on drugs left little time for due diligence.

"In my nine years with the House Judicial Committee, this was the only time we were moving a very substantial piece of legislation without a hearing," said Sterling. Ideally, he said, the committee would have called a host of witnesses, including representatives from the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency, criminal defense lawyers, and officials from states like New York, which adopted such laws a decade earlier.

But no one testified. Tough sentences seemed obvious. "It had some of the qualities of a no brainer," Sterling said, but at other times, "we were flying in the dark about what quantity, what number of years made sense."

Two years later, in another election year, Congress returned to the issue of mandatory minimums. In addition to toughening drug conspiracy penalties, the anti-drug law passed in 1988 made possession of more than five grams of crack a felony punishable by at least five years in prison. Previously, simple possession, as it is called, was a misdemeanor with a 15-day sentence.

William Bennett, the first national drug czar, a position created in the 1988 bill, explained the need for stiff mandatory minimums even for low-level offenders in an interview the following year.

"The casual user is feeding this criminality and supporting [the Colombian] cartel. So, yes, we are going to come down harder on the so-called casual user," said Bennett.