Make dealers pay a higher price

The issue: Connecticut, like the rest of the nation, is suffering through a lethal epidemic of opioid abuse. There were 917 fatal overdoses in Connecticut in 2016.

It is a social problem that has grown out of any number of factors, the chief one being the availability of legally prescribed opioids, or pain killers, that can put a person on the path to addiction.

Even some doctors have admitted to being less than fully informed about the long-term dangers of opioid use, according to a report earlier this year from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

But in addition to availability and ignorance, there’s another insidious factor in the deadly equation: dealers who provide the drugs, some of which now are laced with a lethal synthetic drug called fentanyl.

Some Connecticut legislators are rightly pushing for stricter penalties for anyone convicted of providing drugs that prove deadly.

As it stands, the charge in such a case is second-degree manslaughter with no mandatory minimum sentence.

The proposal is that the charge would be murder, with a minimum sentence of 25 years.

What we wrote: In the first six months of 2017, there were 539 drug intoxication deaths, according to a report from the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, a rate that forecasts 1,078 by New Year’s Eve.

To put these numbers in some perspective, 1,078 would be an increase of more than 100 deaths over 2016 and more than triple the number of overdose deaths five years ago, when there were 357.

And, according to Chief Medical Examiner James Gill, these deaths are largely attributable to opioids, the painkilling drugs that many state residents have legally in their home medicine cabinets.

Prescription opioids include common painkillers like oxycodone and hydrocodone. And if an adult parent has a problem, that might explain the growing number of 1- to 4-year-olds who have been hospitalized as a result of opioid ingestion.

The epidemic — opioids kill more Americans than guns or automobiles — is nationwide and has drawn attention from, thankfully, Donald Trump’s White House down on through states, cities and towns. Editorial, Sept. 1, 2017 Where it stands: Compounding the problem are the dealers, the ones who sell, say, a cocktail of fentanyl, easily accessible heroin and cocaine, a mixture that, incidentally, killed a 54-year-old woman last year.

The man who provided the drugs was sentenced to five years in prison and three years supervised release. State Rep. Kurt Vail, R-Stafford, says the dealer should have been charged with murder.

Yes, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy is working hard to reduce the prison population. The governor’s emphasis has rightly been on clearing nonviolent offenders out of the cells. But dealing lethal drugs is not a non-violent crime. Vail’s proposal — and a similar one from state Rep. Devin Carney, R-Old Lyme — went nowhere in the legislature.

If the legislature can ever surmount its budget impasse, these stricter penalties for dealers should get full consideration.