Comment by 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.
They're sold as some other known opiod and the dealers typically try to dose them to be equivalent because that's all they're getting paid for.
There is no incentive to give out "free drugs", not least because you might kill an otherwise paying customer.
> 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.
> 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.
>> 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.
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...
> 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.