Brother of fentanyl victim asks: Why can dealers just walk away?

Darren Mann, pictured this winter, died of a fentanyl overdose on Feb. 19. He was 33.

Amonth to the day after his brother died of a fentanyl overdose, Ilan Highton wants to know: Where’s the accountability for the dealers?

How can someone sell a drug that leads to a death

and simply walk away? You would investigate if someone killed someone with rat poison, he told Victoria police, but his argument fell on deaf ears. That’s not the way the law works, he was told.

So Highton is left frustrated, torn. “I’m upset with the police, but I understand where they’re coming from, too.”

But what to do? B.C. had 914 drug-related deaths in 2016. That’s more than 10 times the number of homicides seen in a typical year. Highton wants to see dealers face up to the role they play in lethal overdoses.

“I would love them to be prosecuted,” he says. “There should be some responsibility.”

This is a question judges are wrestling with, too. Last week, the B.C. Court of Appeal ruled that the greater risk associated with fentanyl means street-level dealers should receive stiffer first-offence penalties than those who sell other hard drugs.

Six weeks ago, a higher-level dealer busted in the Lower Mainland got an unprecedented 14-year sentence for trafficking. The police cheered.

Many in the justice system are watching some yet-to-be-decided cases in Alberta. Last fall, for the first time, Edmonton police laid a manslaughter charge against a man accused of providing fentanyl to someone who subsequently died. They laid a similar charge in a second case last month. In a third case, the Blood Tribe Police laid charges of manslaughter and criminal negligence causing death against three people accused of providing drugs at a party at which two people died.

Police cite the complexity of the law around manslaughter and criminal negligence — the need for certain elements to be in place before there is a conviction — as a reason such charges are rarely seen in drug-death cases. What happens in Alberta might signal a shift.

None of that will bring back Highton’s brother, though.

It was a shock when Darren Mann was found dead in the bathroom of his apartment on Feb. 19. Few were aware the Victoria plumber had a drug problem. Even those who knew of the 33-year-old’s decadelong, on-again, off-again struggle with heroin were surprised.

“Over the past few years he seemed to be doing so well,” Highton says. He knew his brother (half-brother, technically) had gotten high on one occasion a year ago, but other than that, didn’t think he was using at all.

Mann didn’t fit the image many of us have of heroin users. He wasn’t on the street. Wasn’t living in squalour. He was a hard-working guy from a good home.

“He had plans,” Highton says. “He had so much that he wanted to accomplish.” Mann was into nature, was serious about eating healthy food, and did yoga. “He was very much a hippyish guy.”

But he was also the guy who in his early 20s was at a party where someone said “smoke this.” It turned out to be heroin. The addiction was instantaneous, something Mann connected to a previous hospital stay where he had been treated with an opioid.

Highton is unsure about that link. There was no doubt about his brother’s rollercoaster struggle with heroin, though. “There were a few times where he hit rock bottom.” He overdosed. He recovered. There was a succession of rehab clinics.

Highton believes his brother thought he had bought heroin the night he died, though he acknowledges he can’t prove that. Nor can he prove that the dealer knew that what he was selling was actually fentanyl.

Those kind of questions are what makes charging dealers in lethal-overdose cases so complex, says Staff Sgt. Conor King, who has been leading VicPD’s efforts to fight the opioid crisis.

“In the world of dealing, nothing is clearcut,” he says. There are few universal answers. Some users want the kick of fentanyl, while others are scared of it and want only heroin, or whatever.

Most street drugs now contain fentanyl, though, and its unpredictability — a minute change in potency can make a dose lethal — is why people are warned not to use drugs when alone.

That’s a message largely aimed at streetentrenched users, though. People who want to hide their drug use aren’t going to go to a safe-injection site or find a friend to watch over them. They use in secret, in their bedroom or bathroom — which is where many overdose deaths occur.

“Most people die alone at home,” King says. “That’s a very troubling component in this epidemic.”

It’s all frustrating to Highton. “We need to change something in how we’re dealing with our drug problem,” he says.

He doesn’t believe in legalization, but would like to see supervised therapy in which chronic injection-drug users are supplied with free, pharmaceutical-grade drugs.

Maybe that would lead to fewer dangerous street drugs, he says. As it is, given what is known about the unpredictability of fentanyl, how can dealers — even those who believe they are providing a necessary service to users — trust that what they are selling is safe? Yes, buyers assume a risk, but all the onus shouldn’t be on them.

And when there is a lethal overdose, police should at least go to the dealers — even if no charges are laid — to say: “You should know that the drugs you sold killed somebody.”

King says police have been known to do that. He also says he understands when people who lose loved ones want action from the authorities — not that it makes up for their loss. “It doesn’t lessen the pain of family members.”

VicPD is concentrating on those who deal in large quantities and know what they’re selling, he says. “My guys who work with me, they’ve never been more focused on what they do than right now.”

There have been no consequences for whoever sold Darren Mann his fatal overdose, though.

“I totally get it,” Highton says, “but why are we at the point where that’s the reaction?”