Drug Trafficking Consequences

"We're trying to show that when we have the information, we're going to pursue the people providing this because it's causing death in our communities."
"We think it's a fairly well known fact that the ingestion of fentanyl can cause death. They are supplying something they know could cause death to the person purchasing it. That's where manslaughter comes in."
Det.Sgt.Brad Reynolds, South Simcoe Police Force

"My son didn't deserve to die, he didn't deserve for these people to sell him this sh-- and for me to wake up in the morning to find him dead."
"Shawny may have held a gun to his own head, but the people that sold it to him are the ones that pulled the trigger."
"He was going to work the next day, he had two little boys to live for. He was on the right path. My son turned to the wrong people and he's no longer here."
Denise Lane, Innisfil, Ontario

"The law is clear that you do incur a liability for death resulting from your distribution of a drug."
"That's because the mental state fault requirement for manslaughter is very low -- the objective foreseeability of bodily harm, not even death."
Alan Young, law professor, York University, Toronto

"Given that it's pretty notorious what fentanyl does to people, it seems to me like a logical progression [police laying manslaughter charges on drug traffickers]."
Kent Roach, law professor, University of Toronto

Fentanyl .. torontosun

A new, and perhaps predictable issue has raised its head; with the public now so well aware of the dangers inherent in the use of powerful opiates like fentanyl and carfentanil, more than proven by the seemingly unstoppable incidences of drug overdoses throughout North America caused by other drugs being doctored with the cheaper fentanyl and the introduction of both these potentially lethal drugs to the street trade, no one peddling the drugs can claim ignorance of its deadly effects.

In choosing to continue selling these drugs to people addicted to opiates, drug pushers are fairly directly responsible for the deaths that ultimately ensue. If and when they can be identified and linked to particular instances of drug overdose leading to death they can now expect that local police forces will be arresting and charging them with homicide. This is not a particularly shocking new revelation, after all.

The notorious case of actor John Belushi who died of a drug overdose appears to have been the breaking point when Cathy Smith was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in a plea deal when she was prosecuted for second-degree murder for injecting Belushi with heroin and cocaine that killed him.

The Supreme Court of Canada in 1993 upheld a manslaughter conviction against a man who provided and injected cocaine into a woman's arm with her consent, after which she went into cardiac arrest and choked to death on her vomit.

Two charges against fentanyl traffickers have been laid by Ontario Provincial Police, while an additional three other traffickers are under investigation for the same offence. According to an OPP spokesperson, it can be expected that such charges will be increasingly used as a deterrent and punishment for those who traffic the drugs in lock-step with the growing death rate due to overdoses.

Two fentanyl suppliers in two separate cases have had manslaughter charges brought against them in the past year in Edmonton, Alberta. In Brantford, Ontario, police charged a man with manslaughter for selling powdered fentanyl and cocaine in early September to a man who died of an overdose. While RCMP in that same month reacted after a man died from an overdose of carfentanil, by charging the man who provided the drug, with manslaughter.

However, in Vancouver where a full-flood fentanyl crisis continues to unfold, no manslaughter charges have been laid by police against fentanyl dealers. "This is a complex issue that our investigators have considered at length. I believe charges and convictions in this area are fairly rare, and are usually only successful when a unique set of circumstances and evidence exist for that particular case", explained Const.Jason Doucette.

This could reflect a police culture at variance with those in other parts of the country. And it could conceivably reflect that this is a less efficient police force, incapable of investigating the source of an ongoing proliferation of deadly drugs, linking specific dealers to deadly events in the aftermath of yet another tragedy.

Fentanyl patches. (Postmedia Network)