Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano (R-Gettysburg) on Thursday announced he will soon introduce legislation to strengthen penalties for fentanyl pushers whose sales result in deadly overdoses.
The senator is naming his measure “Tyler’s Law” after Tyler Shanafelter, an 18-year-old constituent who bought what he believed was Percocet but it turned out he had acquired a fentanyl-laced product. The young man fatally overdosed.
“I’m introducing Tyler’s Law to honor the legacy of Tyler Shanafelter, his family, and the other families in Pennsylvania who have lost loved ones to this horrible overdose epidemic,” Mastriano said in a statement. “We must send a message to drug dealers that if you kill Pennsylvanians through the sale of fentanyl, you will be spending most of the rest of your life in prison.”
He expressed frustration that fentanyl dealers are often able to cut deals with prosecutors to avoid significant jail time, even in instances when their products were used fatally. Tyler’s Law would impose a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years for anyone convicted of selling or facilitating the distribution of fentanyl resulting in a death.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that can be 100 times more potent than morphine; a mere two milligrams of the former substance can lead to death. It has also gained popularity among dealers because the processes to manufacture and purvey it are easier than those for heroin. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that over 100,000 opioid-related deaths occurred in 2021, 15 percent more than in the year before.
As Mastriano proposes this legislation, he is also waging a campaign for governor; and his opponent, Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D), is also putting the Keystone State’s fentanyl scourge front and center in his professional agenda. Just recently, the latter released a report underscoring the shift taking place between opioid addicts’ reliance on heroin and their use of fentanyl.
According to the attorney general, Pennsylvania’s Bureau of Narcotics Investigation took hold of more fentanyl in 2021 than they had in the previous four years combined. The agency also noted that overdose deaths continue to climb rapidly: they rose by 16.4 percent in 2020 and rose by another 6 percent last year, totaling 5,438 statewide.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
It’s about time someone in power said enough is enough. Addicts get thrown in jail, time and time again, for petty crimes related to their addiction. They do not get the help they need while there, and they often do more time than the dealer that is supplying them with the drugs. Meanwhile, drug dealers get off light because they can afford a private attorney who cuts a deal for them, and prosecutors think, “They (users) are just going to buy drugs from the next guy and we will eventually get this guy again and make even more money off of him.” Eliminate the sources and you eliminate the majority of the problem. The “feel good” laws passed in the name of “racial injustice equalization” were a huge mistake. Most dealers know they will get off light and will change how they do business to not get caught again. I once heard these words in a courtroom- “If you can afford to buy drugs, you can afford an attorney.” This was said to a single mother who had recently ended an abusive relationship, losing her home of years, and who had lost her job. She wasn’t getting child support for any of her three children and she had fallen apart under the strain. Nobody was helping her. Not the local charities, not DCS, Human Services, nobody. She got 30 days in jail. Her dealer was eventually caught and was out on bond the next day, and doing business as usual. The good news is that the young mother cleaned her act up, without any help, and went on to lead a productive life. The bad news is that her dealer was still doing business as usual when she saw him on the street years later. If you keep the small fish, the bigger fish have to come out of hiding to feed themselves. Makes them much easier to catch. I honestly do not care if we have to spend more money to build bigger jails. I just want the sharks out of the water my family is swimming in. Stiffer penalties for the little fish means that the sharks will have to come out of hiding sooner or later because nobody is going to want to risk peddling their product for them. No product, no addicts. It’s obvious that penalizing the addict isn’t stopping the drug business. They just get someone else hooked on it. If you’re selling a product that kills, you should get the stiffest penalty of all.
Make that all illegal drugs, Gov.