Patients Could Be Jailed in Florida Drug Crackdown
www.painnewsnetwork.org/stories/2017/4/22/patients-could-be-jailed-in-florida-drug-crackdown
By Pat Anson, Editor
The Florida legislature is close to passing a bill that would require mandatory minimum sentences for anyone convicted of selling, purchasing or possessing illicit fentanyl.
Critics say the legislation could result in pain patients being sent to jail when they unwittingly buy counterfeit painkillers made with fentanyl on the black market.
House Bill 477 was approved unanimously by the Florida House this week. Similar legislation is under consideration in the Senate. Both bills would put fentanyl, carfentanil, and their chemical cousins in the same drug class as heroin.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid 50 to 100 more potent than morphine. It is available legally by prescription to treat severe pain, but illicitly manufactured fentanyl has become a scourge across the U.S. and Canada, where it is usually mixed with heroin or used to make counterfeit drugs.
As currently written, the House bill requires anyone convicted of having as little as 4 grams of fentanyl to get a mandatory three year prison term; 14 grams would carry a 15-year sentence; and 28 grams would result in 25 years behind bars.
Judges would have zero discretion to alter the sentences. If the drugs result in someone dying, suspects would face a charge of first degree murder.
While the legislation is primarily aimed at cracking down on dealers, critics say patients desperate for pain relief could also face prison if they buy counterfeit oxycodone and other painkillers laced with fentanyl.
“There’s a massive problem with counterfeit pills,” Greg Newburn, state policy director for Families Against Mandatory Minimums told the Miami New Times.
“You have people who think they’re buying oxy pills who will end up getting labeled as traffickers in fentanyl. A handful of pills could get you three years. If you buy just 44 pills, you could end up with 25 years in prison.”
Newburn was surprised the Florida legislature didn’t learn its lesson from previous efforts to require lengthy prison terms for oxycodone and hydrocodone traffickers. Rigid enforcement of the law led to 2,300 people being sent to prison, including some patients who were simply look for pain relief, according to Reason.com.
“When you look back on how the last mandatory-minimum heroin law was applied, you see that it targeted not just just traffickers but a lot of low-level offenders, people who were never supposed to be targeted by the bill in the first place,” said Newburn. “We had a heroin mandatory-minimum law for 18 years. Lawmakers promised us it would deter drug use, but now we’re in the midst of the worst heroin crisis we’ve ever seen. And the answer to that is to pass another mandatory minimum?”
Florida was one the first states where counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl began to appear. In early 2016, nine people died in Florida’s Pinellas County after ingesting counterfeit Xanax, an anxiety medication.
“Hundreds of thousands of counterfeit prescriptions pills, some containing deadly amounts of fentanyl, have been introduced into U.S. drug markets, exacerbating the fentanyl and opioid crisis,” the DEA warned in a report last year. “Motivated by enormous profit potential, traffickers are exploiting high consumer demand for prescription medications by producing inexpensive, fraudulent prescription pills containing fentanyl.”
As opioid prescriptions have become harder to obtain, some pain patients are turning to the black market for relief. In a recent survey of over 3,100 patients by PNN and the International Pain Foundation, 11 percent said they had obtained opioids illegally on the black market in the year after the CDC’s opioid guidelines were released.
Filed under: General Problems
There they go again! Every time politicians try to solve a problem,they make it worse.Any one using such potent drugs as fentanyl,have an addiction problem,and putting them in a cage will solve nothing.This is a health issue,and with the exception of the dealers,should not be treated as criminal.Will they ever learn in our country? Then to make it even worse they use that archaic,inhumane,mandatory minimum nonsense.That cruel law places judges under a burden that they should not have to deal with.It eliminates their ability to judge fairly on a case by case basis.Did we not learn from the past,when people were basically sentenced to ungodly long sentences for victimless crimes because the judges hands were tied?
If they apply this mandatory minimum nonsense,it will once again be a failure,and destroy lives that could have been changed for the better through sensible sentences and not cruel and unusual punishment.It is not fair to the judges,nor is it fair to the person who minus a drug problem,is not a dangerous hardened criminal.With the exception of the pushers,it is a health problem,not a criminal problem.
People just need to learn that opioids don’t cause addiction. Webinars this week April 24-27 at 9PM EST on the REAL cause of drug abuse. Learn this, tell your legislators, and stop the insanity.
Petition at. Cause com/cdc guidelines/mrpresidet.
4 days left….thx
Every law they pass to curb the illicit drug trade has the “unintended” consequence of harming chronic pain patients. It makes one wonder just how unintended those consequences are. We know that CPP and their providers are sitting ducks because of the crackdown on prescribed medication. Have we become the cash cow along with cannibus? Mandatory sentences do little or nothing to affect those who they are supposed to be target because criminals don’t believe they will get caught and don’t give a dam what the law is!