Drug counterfeiters using fentanyl are getting away with murder

While it seems out of context for a career progressive, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has gone law-and-order rogue in his quest to stem the plague of fentanyl overdoses and deaths in the nation’s capital.

He wants manslaughter charges laid against drug dealers if the illicit narcotics they peddle end up causing death. And he is not wrong in wanting this. The time is now to stop whistling past the graveyard, and ignoring the fact there is a fentanyl crisis that is not going away anytime soon — aided by the fact the lethal drug, 50 to 100 times more powerful than heroin, is being laced into counterfeit pain killers disguised as known prescription narcotics of specific strengths.

The typical liberal response of education and prevention, which has thus far made not a dent in the rash of fentanyl drug overdose deaths across this country, needs some teeth added. Manslaughter convictions would do the trick. “(These drug dealers) are killing people,” Watson said during a recent radio interview. “We see it, certainly, in large numbers in British Columbia, and we’re seeing it here, about a couple of dozen in the last year who have lost their lives as a result of drug overdoses.

“I think we have to send a very strong signal to those people who are going to be engaged in illegal activity.

“They have to pay a much stiffer penalty,” said Watson, a former cabinet minister with the Ontario Liberals. “Otherwise the deterrent is not there, and they stay in business and continue to poison kids.”

The image of Ottawa as a milquetoast government town dominated by politics, its demographic largely white and middleclass, belies the fact that its young people are just as susceptible to experimenting with drugs as young people anywhere.

This obviously troubles the mayor to the point that he wants the Criminal Code tweaked to deal with drug dealers who kill.

In mid-February, Ottawa drug cops arrested a dozen people for running a distribution network for counterfeit pills containing fentanyl.

“We seized thousands of pills, so the potential was there for mass casualties,” Staff-Sgt. Rick Carey told the Ottawa Sun.

“We’re trying to make sure this doesn’t hit the street, because it’s being accessed by youth who aren’t aware of what’s going on.”

The sad news is that some young users are dying with their first adventure, their bodies having no tolerance for a high-strength opioid like fentanyl, often brewed haphazardly in China’s black market, which is being mixed in with counterfeit pills marked to appear as legitimate doses of prescribed opioids like Percocet or Oxy Contin

Bottom line, no one can become an alcoholic after one drink, but can become very dead after one pill.

The law regarding drug dealers needs to be toughened.

As it stands now, they’re getting away with murder.