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Comment by master-lincoln

2 days ago

It's not murder. People are not forced to take fentanyl... Wouldn't these people get into a different drug if it wasn't fentanyl?

While I agree that "murder" is the wrong word, there is an angle that you are missing.

Drug dealers will lace "normal" drugs with fentanyl. It gives a "different buzz". The customer knows they are buying "normal" drugs, and there is no quality control, so lacing happens. If the dealer messes up how much they lace, it is easy to add too much (because a small amount t of fentanyl goes a long way), and your customer ODs.

  • I’ve heard from an HSI friend that a lot more of the fentanyl deaths happen from accidental exposure in their drugs from shared surfaces. For example, somebody buying cocaine that was cut up on a table that was previously used to cut up fent and not properly sanitized.

So if you bought a bottle of water, and inside of that water was a poison that kills you, intentionally added by a criminal because it makes them more profit, that's not murder?

Those people were doing a line of coke, they had no idea they were about to overdose on an opioid.

  • > that's not murder?

    Well, that depends on the legal definition of murder where you live.

    In lots of places, intent matters. You said the pill was added with the intent to make more money. If there was no intent to kill, then in lots of places that isn't murder but might be some other kind of criminal homicide.

    For example, people at Ford made the decision to sell the Pinto with a dangerous defect to make more money and people died as a direct consequence of that product decision. The people who made that decision were not charged with murder (or anything as far as I recall).

    • Look up extreme indifference murder or depraved heart murder - I think you’ll find it exactly fits the context of this discussion

      Also I think they charged people in the ford pinto case with reckless homicide but they got off.

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  • That I would see as extreme recklessness leading to somebody dying, might be called murder in the US. I wasn't aware this is happening on a larger scale. The solution could be to vote for politicians that legalize drugs so users can get them safely

As Arturo Salazar said, "Addicts? They treat themselves... they overdose, and there is one less to worry about." Dark movie