Federal drug crimes are among the most harshly punished crimes in the United States.  What's more, the Federal government is very interested in drug conspiracies, which are explained elsewhere.  Because even the smallest player in a Federal drug conspiracy is held legally responsible for the actions of the biggest player in the eyes of Federal courts, the amount of drugs for which a person be held responsible after conviction is very high.

The substantive component of 21 U.S.C. § 841 is this: it is a Federal crime for a person to knowingly or intentionally:

1. manufacture, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to manufacture, distribute, or dispense, a controlled substance; or
2. to create, distribute, or dispense, or possess with intent to distribute or dispense, a counterfeit substance.

The primary method of prosecuting individuals is the "possess with intent to distribute" method.  This means that there is a presumption that an individual possessing large amounts of a controlled substance is possessing that controlled substance with the intent to distribute it.  Notice, however, that this prohibition also applies to counterfeit controlled substances.  This allows the Federal government to prosecute individuals for possessing, say, corn starch, if the possessor believed the substance to actually be, say, cocaine.

The rest of the statute is quite long, and it is devoted to the punishments available under the statute.  Punishment is dictated by three things: the type of drug, the amount of the drug, and on what schedule the drug is found. Because the federal drug statute can be somewhat confusing, I have rearranged it, and the potential punishments for most federal drug crime can be found in table form elsewhere on this site.

Schedule I
Schedule II
Schedule III
Schedule IV
Schedule V

(Image of Khat provided by the DEA website.)