Feds push back against heroin dealers of death

Cheap but high-quality Mexican heroin smuggled across the border is wreaking havoc in the United States, and a coalition of federal and state prosecutors, health officials and addiction recovery advocates is getting creative in the battle against it.

Case in point: The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Albuquerque is employing a rarely used law — distribution of heroin resulting in death — to go after a dealer who supplied the deadly drug to an Albuquerque teenager. Federal prosecutors have one of two accused dealers allegedly involved in the death of 18-year-old Cameron Weiss in their sights.

Raymond Moya is charged with supplying Weiss, a La Cueva High School athlete, with Mexican black tar heroin in August 2011. If Moya is convicted of distribution of heroin resulting in death, he faces a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of life in prison.

Weiss had met Joseph Dyson at the Metropolitan Detention Center in July 2011. Dyson was in for shoplifting under $250 and Weiss for violating probation on a disorderly conduct conviction.

According to Dyson’s account to prosecutors provided after Weiss overdosed, Dyson bought the heroin from Moya, a former Westside Locos street gang member and prison inmate with a history of drug charges. Then Dyson, Weiss and a high school friend injected some together. Weiss was found dead the next day.

In 2012, federal prosecutors charged Dyson with supplying Weiss the heroin. But Dyson took a plea deal for a lesser heroin distribution charge in exchange for testifying against Moya. Dyson has not yet been sentenced under the plea agreement.

This rarely used law is another way to make dealers responsible for actions that lead to death. While it can be difficult to link an overdose to a specific drug deal, in the Weiss case there are two witnesses — Dyson and Weiss’ friend.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office is on the right track in using all the tools available to tackle the heroin crisis. New Mexico needs more of this out-of-the-box thinking if it is to get a handle on this epidemic.