New law means dealers face murder rap in fentanyl deaths

Florida moved forward Wednesday with stiffer penalties for drug dealers, holding them accountable for their part in the opioid epidemic gripping the state.

Under a law signed by Gov. Rick Scott, they could face murder charges if their customers overdose and die using fentanyl, a cheap, deadly painkiller.

That’s just one of the provisions in the law that’s meant to keep up with modern drug trends and arm prosecutors with new penalties for narcotics trafficking.

“I’m proud to sign this important piece of legislation today to help fight this national epidemic, which has taken the lives of too many Floridians,” Scott said. “This legislation provides tools for law enforcement and first responders to save lives.”

The law imposes a minimum three-year sentence

for anyone caught with at least four grams of fentanyl or other similar drugs like carfentanil, which is 100 times more potent than its more common variant.

Anyone caught with 14 or more grams of fentanyl will be imprisoned for at least 15 years and those caught with 28 or more grams would serve minimum 25-year prison sentences.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid used in medicine to treat pain, but over the past few years South Florida drug dealers have begun mixing it into heroin and pressing it into fake pharmaceutical pills. Most users don’t even know they’re buying fentanyl.

Dealers mix it in a blender with drugs that include caffeine, xanax and heroin, said Bill Schwartz, a Broward County sheriff’s narcotics detective.

“They don’t know if they are getting the heroin part of it or an entire chunk of fentanyl,” he said. “Therefore, it’s just a roll of the dice with what you are putting in your arm.”

Itwas the leading cause of overdose deaths in Florida during the first half of last year, causing 704 deaths, the latest data available from the Florida Medical Examiner’s Commission.

More than 20 percent of those deaths, 156, happened in Palm Beach County. During the same period, 89 people in Broward and 76 in Miami-Dade died from fentanyl overdoses, records show.

Much of what ends up on the black market in South Florida comes from Chinese labs marketed to drug traffickers in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report from July.

As of March 1, however, China said it would ban several variants of the drug. Authorities are hopeful the ban will lead to a decrease in the drug’s availability in the U.S.

Fentanyl is so powerful it sent two West Palm Beach officers to the hospital after they accidentally inhaled airborne residue while testing capsules of the drug last year. In another incident, three Broward Sheriff’s Office drug dogs were hospitalized after catching a whiff in November.

In Delray Beach, where officials are spending $2,000 per overdose call and are looking for every possible solution, 222 people overdosed between Jan.1 and the end of April — most of them from opiates.

Delray Mayor Cary Glickstein said the law is another means of tackling the problem of addiction.

“This is one other positive step in a continuum of solving a complex problem,” he said. “At the end of the day it’s people monetizing and profiting from that addiction and those vulnerabilities and that human suffering.”

The Florida law tackles more than just fentanyl and its analogues. It also makes it easier for the state to pursue charges against drug traffickers for synthetic marijuana, codeine (an opiate-based cough medicine) and similar substances.

The legislation is one of 28 bills the governor signed into law Wednesday.

Last month, Scott declared a statewide public health emergency to obtain more than$27 million in federal grant funding. It’s going to provide greater access to medication that helps treat addiction.

Bill sponsor Rep. Jim Boyd, R-Bradenton, said the legislation, combined with the announcement of the public health emergency, are “great strides” in the fight to end opioid abuse.

“I was proud to sponsor this bill to combat the death and destruction that fentanyl abuse has on communities throughout the state,” Boyd said.