Comment by croemer

Comment by croemer 3 days ago

45 replies

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Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit.

For those who don't want to hit Google, the conviction was for possessing 30g of a synthetic opioid "U-47700". A normal dose is ~1mg, 10mg can be deadly (so this was 30000 trips or killing 3000).

The drug became illegal across the US on November 14, 2016.

"Police said they found the drug in Thorpe’s apartment in Manchester in December 2016" (https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...)

"Preston Thorpe, age 25, was sentenced by the Hillsborough County Superior Court (Northern District) to 15 to 30 years stand committed in the New Hampshire State Prison for possession of the controlled drug 3,4-dicholo-N-[2-(dimethylamino)-cyclohexyl]-N-methylbenzamide (also known as "U-47700") with the intent to distribute. U-47700 is a synthetic opioid that is classified as a Schedule I drug." (https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/preston-thorpe-sentenc...)

TulliusCicero 3 days ago

Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession. Even if the amount implied dealing, that still seems really high. Don't people typically get less than that for sexual assault or armed robbery?

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  • Aurornis 3 days ago

    > Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession.

    The sentence was for intent to distribute. It's an extremely potent substance. This would be like discovering someone had 30,000 pills. You can't really argue that it was for personal use at that point. They also found him in possession of carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl), scales, baggies, and other products. This looks like a very clear case of someone importing high-potency synthetic opioids to redistribute.

    High potency synthetic opioids are a high priority target for law enforcement. These are most often cut (diluted) and then sold to buyers expecting some other opioid product. As you might expect, perfectly diluting a 1mg dose of a powder into a 500mg - 1000mg pill form is extremely hard to do and there's a high risk of "hot spots" forming in certain pills (or sections of a powdered product). This results in a lot of serious overdoses.

    It's a severe problem right now. Most fentanyl overdoses are from users who thought they were taking some other drug. They might have even "tested" it before, but missed the hot spots.

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    • Reasoning 3 days ago

      I'll add on, he mentions in his blog that he was making "tens of thousands of dollars a week" selling drugs. He was not a small time dealer and certainly wasn't just buying drugs for himself.

      His current sentence also (15-30 years) isn't his first prison sentence. He was released and reoffended which absolutely contributed to the longer sentence.

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    • rustcleaner 3 days ago

      15-30 years is a bit heavy for 30 million doses even. 1.5-3 years is way more fair.

      15-30 years of adulthood is like putting your child in timeout for 6 to 12 years (childhood being 0-19)! Is there anything your child could do to spend half his childhood living in a concrete room, maximum grounding? This is what we are doing to a man.

      No. 12 years is public school length so that should be the life sentence, in the interest of keeping government in check. Think it's unfair in your case? Murder him when he gets out and serve your 12. Or... get over it, life goes on, etc. :^)

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      • computably 2 days ago

        By what logic? I could just as easily say that 150 years is "way more fair."

        A comparison with a literal child is disingenuous, children clearly aren't held to the same standards as adults.

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  • zaphar 3 days ago

    I don't know. If you are in posession of enough of a controlled substance to kill 300 people I'm kind of okay with a drastic response. For every Preston Thorpe who turns their life around there 100s of others who will just go out and keep endangering lives like this. I think this is a nuanced topic and 10-30 years is too much for drug possession is entirely lacking the necessary nuance to evaluate. Comparison to other crimes is not particularly useful either without going into the relative harms of each as compared to the harms of the other.

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    • stickfigure 3 days ago

      "enough of a controlled substance to kill" is an absurd, inflammatory metric. They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers and we have no reason to believe he was trying to kill anyone.

      He shouldn't be in prison, period.

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      • Aurornis 3 days ago

        > They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers

        In general, high-potency opioids are cut (diluted) with other powders and then sold as a different product to unsuspecting buyers.

        Most fentanyl overdoses are from people who thought they were consuming a different, more familiar opioid. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids like this one are preferred by drug dealers because it's much easier to smuggle a tiny amount of powder and cut it 1000X than to smuggle the real product.

        It's nearly impossible for amateurs to properly dilute a powder like this, so the end product has a lot of "hot spots" that lead to overdose.

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      • zurfer 3 days ago

        Drug dealers should face prison time. They know that they are breaking the law and potentially ruining lifes for their own profit.

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      • lurk2 3 days ago

        > we have no reason to believe he was trying to kill anyone.

        If someone gave a loaded hand gun to a small child, there might not be any reason to believe that this person was trying to kill the small child, but when the child inevitably shoots himself or someone else, the one who gave the child the gun in the first place shares at least some of the blame.

        You may protest that children are not comparable to adult drug addicts; to this, I’d suggest taking a walk through any major metro area in America and deciding for yourself if “willing and aware” are appropriate words to describe these addicts.

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      • BeetleB 3 days ago

        > They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers and we have no reason to believe he was trying to kill anyone.

        People have already addressed the "aware" part, but "willing"? Really? Do you understand how addiction works?

        I'd bet a lot of money that they saved some number of lives by catching him. He was engaging in an activity that had a high probability of resulting in some deaths. I can sell knives in a store, and I have a reasonable level of confidence that no one died because of those knives. Here, the probabilities are inverted.

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      • Hamuko 3 days ago

        >They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers

        How do you know that they were both willing and aware? Just how aware is your average drug buyer on what they're buying and how upfront your average drug seller on what they're selling?

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      • skeeter2020 3 days ago

        >> to willing and aware buyers

        This part is really debatable, based on what we're seeing with overdoses. The dealers (probably) know what they're selling but I'm not sure the buyers do, which even for a legal good would be a crime.

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      • simulator5g 3 days ago

        I really doubt he told the buyers this was synthetic BS, more likely he lied to all his customers about the substance and thus could have killed them due to mis-dosing...

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    • croemer 3 days ago

      3,000 not 300 if my maths are correct (and lethal dose)

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    • const_cast 3 days ago

      A pack of cigarettes is enough nicotine to kill a grown man. Provided you smoke them all at once.

      It's a bad measurement.

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    • conductr 3 days ago

      How many deadly chemicals are in an average home? Every time I fill up my car with gas, I buy enough to commit dozens of cases of arson.

      Intent matters and there's no reason to believe he intended to harm anyone. I believe it's a crime and should be a felony but this sentence is a bit extreme in terms of punishment fitting the crime.

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      • skeeter2020 3 days ago

        the conviction was literally for the intent to distribute; RTFM

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      • Hamuko 3 days ago

        Gasoline isn't a controlled substance for one.

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      • Aurornis 3 days ago

        > Every time I fill up my car with gas, I buy enough to commit dozens of cases of arson.

        Did you read the link? They also found scales, baggies, and Carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl).

        Filling your car up with gas doesn't compare. A better analogy would be if you tried to fill up a 10,000 gallon tank of gasoline that you couldn't possibly use yourself, all while having a truck full of matches and explosives, and a map to a building with a big circle around it.

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        • conductr 3 days ago

          No evidence this guy was trying to start a massive explosion with a single target. Most evidence is that he was trying to start a lot of tiny fires just like I could with the 20 gallons of gas that's in my tank. Except, not even that because he was just reselling the fuel and the consumer gets to decide how big of a fire they want to create.

          Intent to distribute is a huge scam and calculates out to a unjustly long sentence for a lot of minor offenders. I'm not arguing it shouldn't be illegal or even tack on some extra time above just normal possession, but 15-30 years is absurd for what this guy did in my opinion.

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    • tshaddox 3 days ago

      I wonder what the sentencing guidelines are for possession of a firearm with enough ammunition to kill 300 people.

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  • potato3732842 3 days ago

    Unless you do something so heinous it captivates the public or have a bunch of priors the only crimes that reliably will put you away for that kind of time are ones that the government takes specific offense to. Usually that means ignoring their monopoly on violence but seeing as this guy is behind bars for dealing and not murder I'd bet he just got unlucky and happened to sell the dose that some more equal animal or their relative OD'd on.

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  • brabel 3 days ago

    In Northern Europe you get less than that for murder.

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    • pookha 3 days ago

      Unlikely...He's an incredibly callous individual that was cutting drugs with a substance orders of magnitude more dangerous than fentanyl so he could drive an Audi and live the high life. Given that they tied several deaths back to his operation, and that it was a multi-state joint effort, I doubt he'd get a slap on the wrist by a European judges.

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      • rqmedes 3 days ago

        Agreed $&@!& him, and any company hires him

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      • glommer 3 days ago

        was an incredibly callous individual.

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  • skeeter2020 3 days ago

    in addition to the other comments, this was also not his first conviction. They get extremely punative.

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croemer 3 days ago

Turns out TFA lies on his blog:

> and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now). (https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/)

He's downplaying his crime. It wasn't just Marijuana.

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  • Reasoning 3 days ago

    Definitely a manipulative framing on his part. He originally was convicted for MDMA and marijuana, was released on probation and then was convicted for synthetic opioids. He's probably serving time right now for the marijuana for breaking his probation but he's not in prison now because of it.

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  • ranger_danger 3 days ago

    > He was picked up for breaking his girlfriend’s arm, a detail that’s missing from his own apologies.

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IncandescentGas 3 days ago

Since the top comment seems to be judging the worthiness of this individual to work with databases after prison, for those considering working with or hiring someone with a criminal record, I'd beg you to consider:

You're hiring the person as they are today, long after any punishment, rehabilitation, parold, probation, and personal growth. Not who they were at the time of past actions.

Having your own mini trial, where you sit in judgement over the candidate, from your ignorant position of privilege, using whatever details you can dig up with google may be entertaining for you, but is tells you nothing of what kind of employee they might be. Your mock trial may be especially traumatic to endure for the candidate, because their side of the story is rarely included in any reporting you can dig up. Especially for those unfairly convicted.

With everything going on today, do you really trust our justice system to be fair, especially to someone who is not a wealthy and connected straight white male?

If you're only willing to give people a chance when you judge their offence to be trivial by your own ethics, you're not actually providing second chances for those that need it.

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  • Hamuko 3 days ago

    Your comment doesn't seem applicable to this scenario since this is not about "work with databases after prison" or "long after any punishment, rehabilitation, parold, probation, and personal growth". Even the title says it: "from prison". This individual is actually still undergoing their punishment, not long after it.

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  • croemer 3 days ago

    I'm not judging anything at all. What part of my comment makes you think I judge the worthiness? I just decided to share what the crime was since OP left it out.

    To make it unambiguous I added a prefix: "Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit."

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