Fentanyl-dealing that results in death should be charged as homicide, on top of drug trafficking, a district attorney told the EpochTV’s “California Insider” program, where he explained the danger of fentanyl and what his office is doing to fight the deadly opioid crisis originating from “pure greed.”
“The dealers are not trying to kill their clients. They just don’t care if they do,” said Michael Hestrin, the Riverside County District Attorney. “That’s kind of a murder.”
In Riverside County, there’s an 800 percent increase in the number of fentanyl deaths between 2015 and 2020, Hestrin said.
In just five years, the number of lives lost to fentanyl in the county has spiked from 2 to almost 600 per year, from 2016 to 2021, he said.
To combat the surging fentanyl trafficking and death cases, Hestrin’s office has prosecuted 10 defendants—who sold fentanyl, knowing how toxic it was, and caused the death of a human being—for murder.
“They know how dangerous and deadly this substance [fentanyl] is, and yet they continue to sell because they want the money,” Hestrin said.
Fentanyl is usually mass-produced in China and smuggled into Mexico or other Latin American countries, before arriving in the United States primarily through its southern borders, Hestrin said.
Unlike cocaine and heroin, which are derived from plants, fentanyl is a purely synthetic opioid manufactured in laboratories without natural components, making it much cheaper compared to other drugs, Hestrin said.
To maximize their profit, drug dealers often mix fentanyl with drugs like heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine, and marijuana to lower the production cost while providing the same level of “high” for its users.
However, mixing fentanyl with other drugs often leads to deadly consequences due to the synthetic opioid’s extreme toxicity. A fatal dose of fentanyl is as tiny as two milligrams, small enough to fit on the tip of a pencil, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
What makes the situation worse is that drug trafficking organizations are getting more sophisticated. They are using pharmaceutical machinery to produce counterfeit pills that look identical to common prescription drugs but contain fentanyl.
“People are taking these drugs not knowing [there’s fentanyl in it] ... and it’s killing them,” Hestrin said. “We’re finding a lot of people … who are taking [a pill] or they’re biting off half of it, because maybe they think it’s going to help them sleep. And they’re not waking up.”
Due to lack of public awareness, counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl—40 percent of them contain a fatal dose, according to the DEA—have been circulating in parties, where many young lives have been lost as a result.
“I want to point out, these are not just statistics. … These are [our] kids, our neighbors, our loved ones, our nieces and nephews. It’s hitting home in every community,” Hestrin said.
The blame should not be placed on the victims, Hestrin said. Even though they chose to ingest the pill in the first place, they were unaware that it would kill them, which is why Hestrin’s office has been targeting the drug dealers over the past year.
“We are not prosecuting people so that they stop using drugs,” Hestrin said. What we are trying to do is [to] get people to stop dealing fentanyl because fentanyl is a deadly poison that kills people indiscriminately.”
However, California’s legislation is posing a challenge to bringing fentanyl dealers to justice.
Under federal law, furnishing an illegal drug that causes death can result in 20 years in federal prison whereas in California such cases have to proceed under murder, which is far more difficult, according to Hestrin.
“We have to painstakingly build a case [and] use many methods to prove the case. But not every case can be proven [as a murder],” Hestrin said.
Over 500 lives were lost to fentanyl in Riverside County last year, but not all of the drug dealers involved could be charged with murder, because each case has to be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt” with evidence, according to Hestrin.
After the Riverside County District Attorney prosecuted 10 defendants for selling fentanyl, district attorneys in Orange and San Bernardino counties have followed suit. More counties are jumping on board and taking a similar approach.
As local officials are facing legal limitations in deterring fentanyl trafficking, Hestrin is calling for state- and national-level changes.
“I’m doing my best to try to keep my public safe,” Hestrin said, “But state lawmakers in California and around the country, we need your help to turn back the tide of fentanyl deaths. The laws have to protect the average person on the street.”
To prevent fentanyl poisoning before a tragedy occurs, everyone has to learn about the hard facts and be a part of the public awareness campaign, Hestrin said, adding that everyone has to have a “tough conversation” with their loved ones for them to never take a pill that is not prescribed to them by their doctor, like how he has been telling his own children.
“If somebody hands you a pill at a party, if someone says ‘Hey I have Percocet. It will make you relaxed,’ or ‘It will help you sleep.’ … You can’t take it. You have to assume that it contains a fatal dose of fentanyl,” he said.
