Stop charging suppliers for NJ heroin deaths (Opinion)

A sad and tragic case from 2017 was the subject of nj.com’s in depth look at New Jersey’s strict liability for drug induced death law. Then 32, Shannon McGuigan was friends with a 26-year-old woman. Both were addicted to heroin.

The younger woman was sick from withdrawal and unable to find her dealer desperate for a fix. Shannon, not a drug dealer by trade, finally agreed to sell a small single-use amount of heroin she had to the woman after what she says was an all day bombardment of desperate text messages.

The younger woman died and using the strict liability law NJ prosecuted Shannon who is now serving 12 years in state prison for the woman’s death. Many critics say she’s getting a raw deal. I’m one of them.

The original intent of this law dates all the way back to the crack cocaine epidemic and was meant to go after the very hardcore drug dealers. But I’ll carry my opposition to this law across the board, not just for Shannon McGuigan’s case.

If you want to charge someone for possession, distribution, sale of drugs that’s fine. But to say they are legally responsible for the death of a user is to take the responsibility for what was a willful decision.

Users know they are risking their lives. Their addiction leads them down the dark path to the point of playing Russian roulette. But they absolutely know the risk they take. They know the game they’re playing. They want the heroin. They sought out the heroin. They used the heroin. While their death is tragic, they are the victim of addiction, not of the dealer.

And not of the friend.

The way the law is written, you don’t even need an exchange of money to be potentially charged for someone’s death. It can be a friend simply sharing their heroin and if the circumstances are right a prosecutor can use the strict liability laws to go after them.

To be frank, there’s a hypocrisy here I just can’t abide.

The very same government incarcerating these people earns big bucks in sales tax from cigarettes. Cigarettes kill far more people every year than heroin does. In a recent year about 15,000 people died from heroin nationally whereas each year about 400,000 people die from smoking. Smokers are taking the very same risk as the heroin addict. Each knows it’s something that can kill them.

So where’s the morality here?

Hiding behind the fact the government is to chickensh!* to make cigarettes illegal? That’s not good enough for me to just dismiss the point by saying “well that’s a legal product.” It’s a product the government not only knows is killing far more people than heroin, they’re also profiting from the tax.

They’re complicit. They’re the drug dealer in a sense. Who’s locking them up for every cancer victim that goes in the ground? Should the store clerk who sells Marlboros to a guy who’s already on oxygen be put in prison when that man dies?

You see my point.

Opinions expressed in the post above are those of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Jeff Deminski only.

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