IF YOU REALLY want to talk about nonsensical disparities in the way South Carolina treats different types of crime, don’t compare criminal domestic violence to cockfighting. Compare it to drug addiction.

In South Carolina, first-offense simple possession of crack cocaine is a felony that can land you in prison for five years. First-offense simple criminal domestic violence is a misdemeanor that can put you behind bars for no more than 30 days.

Earlier this month, the Senate voted to eliminate one disparity involving drug sentences — the one that treats the form of cocaine generally used by black people as a far greater threat than the form of cocaine generally used by white people. Under current law, while crack possession is a five-year felony, first-offense powder cocaine possession is a misdemeanor that carries up to two years in prison. The Senate bill would make first-offense possession of either form of cocaine a misdemeanor, with a sentence of up to three years in prison; a second offense would be a felony with a sentence of up to seven years in prison.

That doesn’t make as much sense as what the Senate tried to do a couple of years ago, which was to lower crack sentences to the level of powder cocaine sentences. But at the time, the House would have nothing to do with the change, which was attached to a House bill to increase the portion of their sentences that most prisoners must serve before being eligible for release. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Harrison said then that eliminating the disparity would be fine — as long as that meant increasing sentences for cocaine users, not decreasing them for crack users. No compromise was reached, and the overall bill died, as it should have.

This time around, senators decided to try the compromise of lowering the crack sentences a little while increasing the powder cocaine sentences a little. Since more than twice as many people are serving prison sentences for crack possession as for powder cocaine possession, and since their sentences are 20 percent longer, this change should result, over time, in fewer people being warehoused in our prisons. There’s a downside, though. Since there’s a minimum sentence for distribution of powder cocaine and not of crack, equalizing sentences meant adding minimums on the more serious crack charges, which could increase some prison sentences; that’s nothing to celebrate.

Still, equalizing the sentences makes an important statement about our values. There is no scientific or moral justification for treating two forms of the same chemical substance so differently. While it’s not clear that racism was the motive behind creating the disparity, it’s clear that the effect has been to punish black addicts much more harshly than white addicts.

That, of course, brings us to the bigger question: Why do we spend so much money imprisoning drug addicts, instead of treating them?

Mandatory drug treatment programs have proved to be far more effective at getting people to give up drugs — and to become law-abiding citizens — than prison sentences. And they’re cheaper, too, which certainly should be a consideration in a state that refuses to spend the money needed to hire enough guards for our ever-increasing prison population.

Maybe if we spent a little less money putting addicts behind bars, we’d be able to afford to treat batterers a little more seriously. Or — imagine this — we might even be able to afford to invest in education and counseling programs that would make it less likely that people would become criminals of any type.