News Is a drug overdose murder?

thegreenhand

thegreenhand

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Is a drug overdose murder?

TORONTO -- It’s called “drug-induced homicide.”

Twenty-four American states have specific laws targeting dealers who sell drugs that kill. These laws carry a sentence, depending on the state, of anywhere from two years imprisonment to the death penalty.

As the toxic drug crisis sweeps across North America, there has been a staggering increase in the number of those charges being laid in the U.S. The trend, undocumented before now, has extended to Canada.
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Avery Haines
27 Nov 2021
 
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These laws will not prevent OD death as the street level dealers, fellow users and addicts are not the people responsible for the dangerous product. It’s not funny that you can find wholesale Chinese drug adulterant venders openly bragging they can get anything through US, Mex, Euro customs and guarantee delivery of dangerous cut. So LE is hunting down street level people while you can order barrels of dangerous cut and enjoy a guaranteed cross border delivery. That’s the most common shit. Fent is obviously even easier to get.

Whenever we want to end the nightmare we can start.
 
A popular bumper sticker in my rural hometown says “Shoot your local heroin dealer”….

Media tropes have folks believe that there is a strict dichotomy between drug pushing money crazed sellers and helpless addicted users. Even though any drug user could tell you the line between seller and user is extremely blurry. Mere sharing of drugs (with no transfer of money) could constitute selling if the courts have it out for you.
 
thegreenhand said:
. Mere sharing of drugs (with no transfer of money) could constitute selling if the courts have it out for you.
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If you have more than a specific legislated amount of any illegal drug on you here the charge is almost automatically “posession with intent to sell” garaunteeing that the Court views you as at least a low-level dealer from the get-go. This makes it a lot harder to get diverted to rehab or get the charge dismissed under Mental Health exemptions.

The amounts are typically about a one-day supply for an active addict. With Meth I think it is 2g and with LSD it’s just 2 blotters.

So there is a huge incentive to force addicts to purchase regular small amounts, which are the most expensive by a long shot. So, for addicts who fund their drugs with petty crime (usually just property crimes here) it actually increases the amount of crime.

A single gram is 1/2 the price of a gram bought as part of an ounce. So hypothetically your addict could possibly commit 14 X the number of break and enters to purchase their one gram daily versus making just one good score and buying an ounce up front to last the month.

Literally no-one thinks through the likely potential unforseen outcomes when these laws get drafted.
 
Does the law apply to pharmaceutical companies and medical Docs? I mean prescription meds kill ca 125,000 Americans a year. Prescription opioids OD alone kill 15,000 American every year. Does that make the company selling them (or the Dr prescribing) liable to mass murder???
 
Perforated said:
If you have more than a specific legislated amount of any illegal drug on you here the charge is almost automatically “posession with intent to sell” garaunteeing that the Court views you as at least a low-level dealer from the get-go. This makes it a lot harder to get diverted to rehab or get the charge dismissed under Mental Health exemptions.

The amounts are typically about a one-day supply for an active addict. With Meth I think it is 2g and with LSD it’s just 2 blotters.

So there is a huge incentive to force addicts to purchase regular small amounts, which are the most expensive by a long shot. So, for addicts who fund their drugs with petty crime (usually just property crimes here) it actually increases the amount of crime.

A single gram is 1/2 the price of a gram bought as part of an ounce. So hypothetically your addict could possibly commit 14 X the number of break and enters to purchase their one gram daily versus making just one good score and buying an ounce up front to last the month.

Literally no-one thinks through the likely potential unforseen outcomes when these laws get drafted.
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Wow 2 blotters is ridiculous.

We have similar laws here in the US too. Personal amounts are defined by individual state laws not by the federal govt. I haven’t looked at what my state’s amounts are in a while. With marijuana they were pretty generous but with other drugs not at all
 
paracelsius said:
I mean prescription meds kill ca 125,000 Americans a year. Prescription opioids OD alone kill 15,000 American every year.
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Do you have a source for this? I’m particularly curious about the first number, given that 100k American died from any kind of drug overdose I’m dubious of the claim that 125k died from prescription meds…

I’m also curious how many of those 15,000 Rx opioid overdoses were from a single drug. Also worth considering is if the individual had a prescription or if they were using diverted drugs.

Your point is well taken though, doctors could very well be considered liable under laws like this (another reason why these laws are stupid)
 
^Yeah, prescription drugs likely make up a mere single digit percentage of drug ODs, if not less. Doctors don't script opioids anymore, at least not in the U.S. My grandma gets only 10x5mg hydrocodone a month and she's 88 with both knees replaced. For fuck's sake...
 
I can somewhat understand criminal negligence causing death for misrepresented drugs, but frankly on the black market most people don't know what they are selling and caveat emptor should be expected of the purchaser. Homicide or even manslaughter is just scapegoating. If you die after taking drugs you bought on the black market you are primarily at fault, not the person who sold it to you, assuming no deliberate adulteration of the substance specifically to cause harm (not just to juice up the effect to make a higher profit). If society thinks this is insufficiently protective of drug users they should provide an alternative to the black market, not scapegoat its participants.
 
thegreenhand said:
Do you have a source for this? I’m particularly curious about the first number, given that 100k American died from any kind of drug overdose I’m dubious of the claim that 125k died from prescription meds…
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I miss that^... here is a harvard study:
https://ethics.harvard.edu/blog/new-prescription-drugs-major-health-risk-few-offsetting-advantages ... About 128,000 people die from drugs prescribed to them....
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old study, numbers are higher now!
more data (lots actually ) at CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/index.html and NIH : https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
 
Cream Gravy? said:
^Yeah, prescription drugs likely make up a mere single digit percentage of drug ODs, if not less. Doctors don't script opioids anymore, at least not in the U.S. My grandma gets only 10x5mg hydrocodone a month and she's 88 with both knees replaced. For fuck's sake...
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And people die due to interactions between 2 prescription drugs that shouldn't be taken together too, doctors make this type of mistakes sometimes, theoretically pharmacists are educated on drug interactions and should spot them and call the doc office to double check but they're just humans too.
Also people can die because of a situation that they lied to the doc about when getting a script.
 
paracelsius said:
I miss that^... here is a harvard study: old study, numbers are higher now!
more data (lots actually ) at CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/deaths/index.html and NIH : https://www.drugabuse.gov/drug-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
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i see, i think we're using two different definitions of overdose. i was using it with respect to psychoactive drugs (taken for recreation, to cope, etc.)

looking at deaths from any kind of drug is a very different number
 
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