So there’s a federal bill floating around in California that would charge drug dealers who sell fentanyl to people — who later overdose and die from the drug — with murder.
That’s already happening in Georgia. In fact, I’ve sat in on two or three trials now where the defendant faced felony murder charges for distributing the drug.
It’s a peculiar phenomenon. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone charged with felony murder after they sold, say, cocaine or LSD to somebody and the “customer” jumped off a building afterwards. And I’ve definitely never seen a bartender charged with felony murder after he sold a six-pack of Budweiser to somebody who subsequently got rip-roaring drunk and crashed his truck into a telephone pole.
But it’s the exact same “cause and effect” logic going on here. Someone sells a mind-altering and clearly dangerous intoxicant to a customer, that customer uses the product and that person dies, directly or indirectly, from using it.
What’s the difference?
If we’re going to charge low-level, scum of the earth fentanyl dealers with felony murder, then by that same legal rationale we ought to be charging the suits at Anheuser-Busch with murder every time there’s a drunk driving fatality. Heck, why not charge the CEOs of Coca-Cola with felony murder anytime someone dies from diabetes? There’s literally NO discrepancies in the thought process.
Alas, as a society, we consider ONE type of lethal transaction worthy of a lifetime in prison sentence while all the others are laughably absurd.
But here’s the part that REALLY makes me shake my head. We’re seeing district attorneys go after halfway-to-homeless drug dealers with the I.Q.s of aquarium gravel, but guess who ISN’T being prosecuted for distributing the same deadly product, even though it’s on a much, much larger scale?
I don’t see any legislation looking to charge physicians who knowingly overprescribe high-powered opioids for profit to people they KNOW are inclined to abuse them with felony murder.
I don’t see any legislation looking to charge all of those fly-by-cryptocurrency industrialists — who literally BUILT their overnight fortunes on high-tech money laundering schemes to aid and abet known drug traffickers — with felony murder.
And I definitely don’t see any legislation looking to charge the C-level executives of these multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical giants — who not only lied about the deadliness of their products, but covered it up — with felony murder.
But hey, we’ve got legislation going after the absolute LOWEST form of fentanyl distributor in the cycle. And we all know it isn’t going to do ANYTHING to prevent future opioid overdose deaths, no matter how good it might make a couple of senators and representatives feel to vote “yes” on it.
This newfangled obsession with charging fentanyl dealers with murder is just yet another spoke on the never-ending farce that is the “War on Drugs.” American taxpayers have spent more than ONE TRILLION dollars combating the drug trade over the last 50 years, and what do we have to show for it?
Per capita substance abuse hasn’t gone down. In fact, it’s increased.
Fatal overdoses aren’t declining, they’re on an uptick.
Instead of illicit drugs being harder to find, they’re now easier (and more affordable) than ever — and deadlier, on top of it.
What the “War on Drugs” has done, though, is put a lot of people behind bars. People, I must remind you, that we as taxpayers are footing the bill for.
So tell me again — why should I be happy about paying for someone to be incarcerated for 60 years instead of five? Because that’s ALL these bills and prosecutorial pushes are doing.
I have no hesitations saying that we’re on the wrong side of history when it comes to our federal and state drug policies. One hundred years from now, people are going to look back on our justice system and say “Wait, you took people who were sick, and your solution was to TOSS THEM IN JAIL?”
But we’re too stubborn to admit that today. Or maybe some of us are just sadists who like to see “the other people” suffer.
One thing that isn’t in dispute, though, is that virtually EVERYTHING the feds have attempted to curtail opioid abuse and overdose deaths hasn’t worked. And there is no reason to believe that charging dumber than dirt drug pushers with murder will do anything to stop the spread of the epidemic.
It’s a policy destined to fail, just like every other major “War on Drugs” policy has before it.
At the end of the day, we’re ALWAYS going to have a drug problem in our society.
But we’re not going to make any headway against it until our lawmakers realize that at the heart of the matter, it isn’t a criminal justice issue — but one of the gravest public health concerns we’ve ever encountered as a nation.
Funny how some people are dead set against spending public money on giving people healthcare and treatment — but totally OK with spending infinitely more public money on imprisoning them.