TheAgitator.com
Death by Drug War
Thursday, January 3rd, 2008Washington State has a law allowing prosecutors to impose a special homicide charge on people who supply drugs to overdose victims. The problem is that the law itself may be causing more overdose deaths.
The state of Washington’s position is clear: If someone calls 911 when a friend is overdosing, not only does the witness risk charges for possessing or selling drugs (which 911 callers in these situations have feared since the passage of the Controlled Substances Act), but he or she could be charged with homicide, too. The end result? Overdose victims—who might survive with prompt medical care—may be abandoned and left to die.
"It goes in the wrong direction and cuts against overdose prevention, overdose reporting, and taking someone to the hospital," says defense attorney Hiatt. "If I give you the drugs, I’ll be less likely to take you to the hospital."
When you think about how the law would be applied, it’s far more likely to catch teens and college kids who share illicit drugs with friends making just such a decision than it is to catch any major drug dealer. I doubt many people overdose with their dealers, or leave behind strong evidence of where they obtained their drugs. But it’s pretty likely that young people would share drugs among friends, then worry about what to do when one of them ingests too much. This law will make them less likely to get emergency medical care. Which means it’s likely to cause more deaths than it prevents.
…but then, isn’t that the point?
Laws like this are meant to reinforce that drugs should be restricted to anonymous transactions in poor areas ill-served by police and emergency services. Keep the stigma of poverty on drugs, keep the stigma of drugs on poverty, reinforce the appalling status quo.
This law is not designed to bust dealers. It’s designed to scare kids with the threat of a murder conviction if one of their friends dies while using, in the hopes that said threat will prevent the from using at all. Of course, we all know that it won’t work, and the only results will be more dead, more people serving sentences for “murder”, and an big leverage card for DAs to use to force people to plea and give evidence.
The ever-widening gap between reality and legislators will never cease to amaze and disgust me.
That presumes that they care, Nathan. I don’t think they do. They pass whatever someone who matters to them drafts up, often without even reading it.
Oh, Radley, how little you understand. It’s for the children! why can’t you see that?
Meh? Who cares, it’s just a bunch of druggies anyways. One more dead is just Darwin chlorinating the gene pool.