As more children die from fentanyl, some prosecutors are charging their parents with murder
As more children die from fentanyl, some prosecutors are charging their parents with murder
A growing number of parents across the U.S. are being criminally charged with murder or manslaughter after their children die from exposure to fentanyl.
What's neat about this is it's not going to help any children, they know it won't help any children, and they don't want it to. It's an excuse to put more people in prison for longer because a Fucking Lot of people make money every time someone goes to prison. It's an excuse to boost police budgets that are already inflated, and to erode our civil liberties even further than they already have. We joke that we're losing the drug war and we regular citizens are, but not to drugs. The drug war is a proxy war that the moneyed establishment is waging against the working class. That's who's winning the drug war that we're losing, and losing so many of our loved ones to.
42Hmm, I'm a bit confused... Are you arguing against charging parents who endangered their child by exposing them to overdosing amounts of fentanyl?
3Pretty sure they're arguing that charging parents won't help children. We have a fentanyl problem so severe that children are dying at unprecedented rates, because the drug is so deadly is only takes an amount equivalent to the weight of a mosquito to be lethal.
And we are choosing to address that problem, as we have for 40 years, through stricter prison sentencing, which has never improved or otherwise addressed the root causes of addiction. Punishing addicts makes everyone feel better, because...children dying is fucking devastating and we need someone held accountable, and the parents do bear at least some responsibility.
But just because it makes us feel better doesn't mean it is effective.
Detectives testified that when Waite found her daughter unresponsive she rushed to a pharmacy to buy naloxone, a drug used to reverse an opioid overdose. The couple did not call 911 until hours later when Allison started having trouble breathing.
These parents made a pretty disgusting choice, but they did it because they thought they had a chance of keeping their child. If we could set aside our impotent outrage and acknowledge that offering support and oversight to parents in these situations, rather than the heavy hammer of "justice", this little girl might still be alive. Our appetite for vengeance would be unsated, but we would save more children and help people improve their lives.
There are many other things that need doing--many, many things--to make a dent in America's drug epidemic, and headlines like this are frustrating because we keep pulling out the same useless tool.
You know those visual gags about someone about to engage in a duel choosing between an assortment of weapons and they pick something silly like a banana? This is the banana, and the joke is so, so old.
19Yes I absolutely am, because it won't help kids any at all. This model we follow where we wait until someone dies and then swoop in, designate someone else to be responsible and then hurt that person as much as possible just doesn't work. In fifty years it has not helped one addict get clean, it hasn't prevented one person becoming an addict, and it hadn't stopped one overdose death. We've doubled down so hard on this that there are people doing life for simple possession of marijuana. If this was a good idea that worked it would have had some measurable impact by now, but the numbers say that things are getting exponentially worse. I've buried 5 close friends and family members due to addiction. I'm sick of doing the same stupid thing over and over again and then when it inevitably doesn't work just doubling down again.
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sounds entirely appropriate, and necessary
4As it should be
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SANTA ROSA, Calif. (AP) — Madison Bernard climbed into bed before dawn with her toddler, Charlotte, who was asleep next to a nightstand strewn with straws, burned tinfoil and a white powder.
Some 20 states have so-called “drug-induced homicide” laws, which allow prosecutors to press murder or manslaughter charges against anyone who supplies or exposes a person to drugs causing a fatal overdose.
“These are tragic cases because drug addiction has destroyed a precious life and the parents face the consequences of their reckless actions,” said Charlie Smith, the top prosecutor in Frederick County, Maryland, and president of the National District Attorneys Association.
The National District Attorneys Association doesn’t track how many parents have been charged for exposing their children to fentanyl, but news reports and interviews with prosecutors show such cases have been on the rise since the onset of the pandemic.
In Sonoma County, where Charlotte slept with her mom in a messy apartment in Santa Rosa, first responders testified at a preliminary hearing that they found fentanyl in powder form on a nightstand next to the bed.
A judge is expected to set a trial date at a Sept. 11 hearing for Charlotte’s mother, Bernard, who woke up to find her daughter struggling to breathe, and her father, Evan Frostick.
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