Death to the Drug Dealers

Our president has called for the death penalty to be imposed on the drug dealers who kill thousands of people by selling their illegal and highly addictive products. Drugs.

He is right, of course. If you cause someone’s death, then you should pay. That’s the law. Still, our law is seriously flawed because when you go to trial for murder, you have to show that you actually caused the victim’s death.

Well, we get around that problem a little bit in state courts all the time. We have different degrees of murder. The penalties are higher if you kill a police officer or a witness to another crime. If the state can’t show intent, there is always reckless endangerment or criminally negligent homicide. 

And there’s the rub. Proving that a drug dealer wants to kill all their customers is a really hard battle to win in court. How can you stay in business, the defense might ask. No death penalty for reckless endangerment, or every drunk driver who causes a fatal accident could be facing the death penalty.

Not to mention that for every major drug dealer that gets taken off the street, another one is ready to move in and take over the market. Heck, in good old England when they used to hang pickpockets, a crowd would gather to watch. It drew lots of pickpockets.

But, stopping the tens of thousands of drug deaths in our country each year really is important. And, I have some ideas. But, first, just two words. State and Federal.

                                                                   Huh?

Well, even if Congress passes a law that allows death sentences for drug dealers, it would only be for federal violations. It’s not a federal crime when a cop in Milwaukee or Detroit or Holtsville arrests someone for selling their aunt’s prescription painkillers that they stole from her bathroom.

So, let’s look at a federal penalty. It could be applied to the drug mules who come across the border, or through the airport. But, that would be a pretty small bite at the problem. Better to stop a truck filled with drugs, or a cargo ship with a hold that is loaded with crates of drugs from China or Mexico or, perhaps, a transshipping company in Germany or Canada.

But, heck, they are all now incorporated in Panama anyway, and the owners of the ships and trucks could easily transfer their company headquarters to some place which won’t extradite them. Like Switzerland. Or Afghanistan. Or Bangladesh.

(Disclaimer: Or, maybe not. The list of nations which do not have extradition treaties with the United States - or which have really limited treaties, or have very workable treaties on paper but do not actually extradite people - is long and constantly changing. So, for any big drug dealers who read this, check it out before you form a corporation in some country you might have to move to.)

Well, you say, there aren’t any major drug dealers who are reading your blog, you self-centered and demented liberal-leaning critic of our President and our Way of Life. Well, to you I have one word. “Feh.”

It stands for Forget Everything you have Heard about drug dealers.

Now, we haven’t seen this part reported out at length. But, let’s look at one really important thing. There are just two essential sources of illegal drugs on our streets and in our children’s pockets and in bodies in the morgues. Doctors and manufacturers.

Now, we all know - or should know - that a very small percentage of doctors write a very big percentage of scripts for the illegal drugs that hit the streets.

And it is big business. West Virginia, a small state which had the nation’s highest rate of drug deaths in the nation, found one small town with only about 3,000 residents had been sent 20.8 million prescription painkillers between 2008 and 2015. The hydrocodone and oxycodone went to two drug stores only four blocks apart.

Well, the state sued the manufacturers and suppliers, and settled with two of them for $36 million. It helped with anti-drug and with treatment programs.

Now if Donald Trump’s program had been in place - it became a federal crime because the drugs were sold across state lines - the heads of those corporations would have faced the death penalty.

Heck, a special prosecutor could have been appointed to go after the real drug dealers, the people who were making all the money off the sale of those drugs.  

                                                 Is This For Real?

Let’s make it real. The New York Times recently reported a federal indictment charging five New York doctors with bribery and taking part in a kickback scheme to increase a drug company’s sale of a highly addictive fentanyl spray. The firm was charged with illegally paying some doctors $100,000 a year for prescribing millions of dollars worth of its product, and funneling the payments through a phony lecture scam.

So, what should we do if Dr. Gordon Freedman - said to be one of the company’s top prescribers of the drug and the company’s highest-paid speaker - is found guilty of the charges.

Now you get it. It won’t be the college students flying back from vacation or the immigrants who manage to get over the big fence who will be facing the death penalty for drug dealing. It will be the officers of the companies which make millions by producing drugs we don’t need and selling them illegally, and the doctors who push all those prescriptions.

And, if we follow the money, the people getting rich off the illegal sale of those drugs could also be in danger. Who would they be? The stockholders.

Everyone who owns stock in a company that manufactures drugs could face the death sentence. It will keep the courts in business for the rest of our lifetime. And, the best part is that civil forfeitures will cover all those court costs.

Doctors in jail. Stock Brokers in jail. All of those one per-centers who own stocks in companies that own stocks in other companies that profit from the manufacture and sale of drugs...well, it will certainly upgrade our prisons.

And, our streets will be a lot safer. If anyone is left to walk on them.