The defendant-appellant Harvey E. Page, Jr. (“Page” or “the defendant”) has contested his guilty-plea conviction under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) for conspiring to distribute, and to possess with intent to distribute, an uncharged amount of cocaine base (or “crack”); and his consequent twenty-year prison sentence under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1). The subject review constitutes Page’s second visit to the Sixth Circuit. This court had previously vacated the appellant’s original thirty-year sentence and remanded for re-sentencing in light of the Supreme Court’s edict in Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466, 120 S.Ct. 2348, 147 L.Ed.2d 435 (2000).1 The Sixth Circuit resolved on its initial review that unpreserved “plain error”2 had prejudicially infected the sentencing court’s narcotics quantification by a preponderance of the evidence, because the trial court’s at*81tribution of at least 1.5 kilograms of crack to the defendant triggered a guidelines sentencing range of thirty years to life; whereas, under 21 U.S.C. § 841(b)(1)(C), the statutory maximum penalty for trafficking an unspecified volume of cocaine base was twenty years. United States v. Page, 282 F.3d 536, 542-45 (6th Cir. 2000) (“Page 1”), cert. denied, 532 U.S. 1056,121 S.Ct. 2202, 149 L.Ed.2d 1032 (2001). Following remand, the sentencing judge exacted a twenty-year imprisonment term, the maximum authorized by § 841(b)(1)(C).

Page, through his court-appointed counsel, subsequently asserted three new Apprendi-based attacks against his amended judgment of conviction and sentence:3 (1) the trial court allegedly should not have found a crack cocaine quantity by a pre*82ponderance of the evidence for any sentencing purpose, including the computation of the defendant’s Guidelines range; (2) the indictment against Page was averredly defective because it lacked any drug quantity charge; and (3) the federal drug offense statutory scheme is unconstitutional, because whereas the rights of due process and trial by jury purportedly demand that a predicate drug quantity “element” be charged in the indictment and proved to a jury beyond a reasonable doubt in all drug prosecutions, the extant federal statutory regime permits narcotics prosecutions and convictions absent any allegation of an implicated drug quantity.4

The appellant’s initial assault, namely that Apprendi is violated whenever a trial judge makes any drug quantification finding by a preponderance of the evidence for any sentencing purpose, including Guidelines sentencing purposes, has been rejected by the Supreme Court in Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545, 122 S.Ct. 2406, 153 L.Ed.2d 524 (2002). In Harris, the Court authorized district judges to find a sentencing factor (in that case, possession of a firearm) by a preponderance of the evidence, when that factor “increased the minimum penalty for a crime, though not beyond the statutory maximum!]”5 See id. at 2410. (Citation omitted; emphasis added). The Harris Court explained that, unlike sentencing factors which raise the maximum penalty to which the defendant is exposed, “[t]he provisions before us now, however, have an effect on the defendant’s sentence that is more consistent with traditional understandings about how sentencing factors operate; the required findings constrain, rather than extend, the sentencing judge’s discretion.” Id. at 2412-13. The Harris majority concluded that the implicated sentencing factor — possession of a firearm — “need not be alleged in the indictment, submitted to the jury, or proved beyond a reasonable doubt.” Id. at 2420.

The constitutional dichotomy which segregates an ostensible “sentencing factor” *83which raises the statutory maximum penalty and thus in reality is an element of the offense, from a true “sentencing factor” (including a Guidelines sentencing component such as drug quantity) which merely restricts the trial court’s discretion within the statutory sentencing range, and thus may be judicially ascertained by a preponderance of the evidence, was reinforced by the Court in Ring v. Arizona, 536 U.S. 584, 122 S.Ct. 2428, 153 L.Ed.2d 556 (2002), wherein a majority of the Court commented:

In Harris v. United States, 536 U.S. 545, 122 S.Ct. 2406, 153 L.Ed.2d 524, a majority of the Court concludes that the distinction between elements and sentencing factors continues to be meaningful as to facts increasing the minimum sentence. See ante, at 2419 (plurality opinion) (“The factual finding in Apprendi extended the power of the judge, allowing him or her to impose a punishment exceeding what was authorized by the jury. [A] finding [that triggers a mandatory minimum sentence] restraints] the judge’s power, limiting his or her choices within the authorized range. It is quite consistent to maintain that the former type of fact must be submitted to the jury while the latter need not be. ”).

Id. at 2441 n. 5. (Brackets in original; italics added).

After Harris and Ring, it is beyond peradventure that no Apprendi error contaminates a bench finding, by a preponderance of the evidence, of Guidelines sentencing factors, including narcotics quantification, which define a Guidelines sentencing range within the proper statutory sentencing range triggered by the crime of conviction.6 See, e.g., United States v. Lawrence, 308 F.3d 623, 634 (6th Cir. 2002) (“we have squarely held that Apprendi does not apply to the Guidelines”) (citing United States v. Garcia, 252 F.3d 838, 843 (6th Cir. 2001)); see also United States v. Samuels, 308 F.3d 662, 671-72 (6th Cir. 2002); United States v. Chapman, 305 F.3d 530, 534-36 (6th Cir. 2002). In the case sub judice, Page has not attacked the sentencing court’s attribution to him of at least 1.5 kilograms of crack as unsupported by a preponderance of the evidence; rather, his assault against his Guidelines calculation rested solely upon his misconceived contention that the court should not, as a matter of law, have made a drug quantity finding for any sentencing purpose, including Guidelines purposes.

Accordingly, Page’s argument that he should have been sentenced with reference to U.S.S.G. § 2Dl.l(c)(14), which yields an offense level of 12 for the smallest detectable amount of cocaine base (and which, when matched with his criminal history category VI, would generate a Guidelines range of 30 to 37 months in federal custody, see U.S.S.G. § 5A), lacked legal foundation. The trial court had not erred by computing the defendant’s of*84fense level (38) under the Guideline’s Drug Quantity Table by reason of his “proved-by-a-preponderance-of-the-evidence” involvement with more than 1.5 kilograms of crack cocaine, see U.S.S.G. § 2D1.1(c)(1); nor had that court erred in its Guidelines calculus which produced a sentencing range of thirty years (360 months) to life under U.S.S.G. § 5A (the Sentencing Table) by coupling an offense level of 38 with a criminal history category of VI. Because Page’s Guidelines range justified a minimum sentence of thirty years, but his statutory maximum penalty was twenty years (as determined by the circuit court in Page I, which the government has not contested), no sentencing error tainted his twenty-year sentence.

Second, Page’s contention that the absence, from the implicated indictment, of any allegation of a specific “elemental” crack cocaine quantity rendered that indictment fatally defective, and thus deprived the federal courts of subject matter jurisdiction over the instant prosecution, has also been dismissed by controlling Supreme Court and Sixth Circuit precedent. See United States v. Cotton, 535 U.S. 625, 122 S.Ct. 1781, 1784-85, 152 L.Ed.2d 860 (2002) (rejecting the argument that the absence of a drug quantity allegation from a narcotics offense indictment constitutes a jurisdictional defect);7 United States v. Stewart, 306 F.3d 295, 310 (6th Cir. 2002) (“The government’s failure to allege a drug quantity does not render a drug distribution indictment constitutionally infirm.”); id. at 320-21 (“it is now settled that the omission of the element of drug quantity from the indictment did not deprive the district court of subject matter jurisdiction over the eases now before us.”) (citing Cotton, 122 S.Ct. at 1784). Because Page’s indictment was treated as having charged him with the smallest measurable amount of cocaine base for “elemental” purposes, any technical error which inhered in the absence of an expressed elemental amount of that narcotic was substantively harmless. Cotton, 122 S.Ct. at 1785-87; Stewart, 306 F.3d at 321-23.

Third, and finally, the defendant’s constitutional challenge to the federal narcotics prosecution and sentencing system codified in 21 U.S.C. § 841, which he has anchored in the averment that narcotics defendants convicted and sentenced thereunder are deprived of due process and trial by jury rights because the faulted statute authorizes narcotics convictions absent any “elemental” charge or jury finding regarding quantity, and further authorizes sentences based on drug quantification by the trial court by a preponderance of the evidence, has also been overruled by the Sixth Circuit. United States v. Martinez, 253 F.3d 251, 256 n. 6 (6th Cir. 2001) (ruling that “[w]e decline Appellants’ invitation to find that 21 U.S.C. § 841 is unconstitutional in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Apprendi. Appellants argue that the drug statute is unconstitutional because Congress intended for drug quantity to be a sentencing factor; whereas, Apprendi requires drug quantity to be submitted to the jury for proof beyond a reasonable doubt.... Rather, Apprendi only requires those sentencing factors that increase the penalty beyond the statutory maximum to be submitted for proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”). (Emphasis in original).

Page, through counsel, has conceded that Martinez is fatal to his constitutional claim, but has requested that this reviewing panel reconsider that legal mandate in *85light of a conflicting Ninth Circuit decision. However, the defendant’s request cannot be accommodated, “because a subsequent panel of this circuit court is powerless to revisit, modify, amend, abrogate, supersede, set aside, vacate, avoid, nullify, rescind, overrule, or reverse any prior Sixth Circuit panel’s published precedential ruling of law.” United States v. Dunlap, 209 F.3d 472, 481 (6th Cir. 2000).

In any event, Martinez is unassailable after the Supreme Court’s interceding dictates in Harris and Ring, evolved above, which mandated that judicial findings, made by a preponderance of the evidence, of sentencing factors which restrict the sentencing court’s discretion within the statutory sentencing range, but which do not elevate the maximum penalty to which the defendant is exposed (which may be the “default” statutory maximum provision for an uncharged amount of narcotics), do not impinge the constitution. Likewise, the result in Martinez is compelled by the logic of the Supreme Court’s mandate in Cotton, supra, which posited that a “narcotics quantity” allegation is not an essential element in every indictment charging a narcotics offense; rather, in indictments lacking a drug quantity allegation, the “elemental” controlled substance quantity will be deemed the smallest amount prosecutable under the controlling statute.

This reviewing court has carefully and thoroughly studied the lower court’s amended judgment, the record below, the briefs and arguments of counsel, and the controlling legal authorities, and concludes that no prejudicial error (“plain” or otherwise) has tainted Page’s amended judgment of conviction and sentence. Accordingly, the defendant’s amended judgment of conviction and sentence is AFFIRMED.