5 ms·

Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession. Even if the amount implied dealing, that still seems really high. Don't people typical

Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession. Even if the amount implied dealing, that still seems really high. Don't people typically get less than that for sexual assault or armed robbery?

brabel 1y ago
In Northern Europe you get less than that for murder.
- pookha 1y ago
  Unlikely...He's an incredibly callous individual that was cutting drugs with a substance orders of magnitude more dangerous than fentanyl so he could drive an Audi and live the high life. Given that they tied several deaths back to his operation, and that it was a multi-state joint effort, I doubt he'd get a slap on the wrist by a European judges.
  - glommer 1y ago
    was an incredibly callous individual.
  - rqmedes 1y ago
    Agreed $&@!& him, and any company hires him
zaphar 1y ago
I don't know. If you are in posession of enough of a controlled substance to kill 300 people I'm kind of okay with a drastic response. For every Preston Thorpe who turns their life around there 100s of others who will just go out and keep endangering lives like this. I think this is a nuanced topic and 10-30 years is too much for drug possession is entirely lacking the necessary nuance to evaluate. Comparison to other crimes is not particularly useful either without going into the relative harms of each as compared to the harms of the other.
- stickfigure 1y ago
  "enough of a controlled substance to kill" is an absurd, inflammatory metric. They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers and we have no reason to believe he was trying to kill anyone. He shouldn't be in prison, period.
  - zurfer 1y ago
    Drug dealers should face prison time. They know that they are breaking the law and potentially ruining lifes for their own profit.
  - simulator5g 1y ago
    I really doubt he told the buyers this was synthetic BS, more likely he lied to all his customers about the substance and thus could have killed them due to mis-dosing...
  - Aurornis 1y ago
    > They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers In general, high-potency opioids are cut (diluted) with other powders and then sold as a different product to unsuspecting buyers. Most fentanyl overdoses are from people who thought they were consuming a different, more familiar opioid. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids like this one are preferred by drug dealers because it's much easier to smuggle a tiny amount of powder and cut it 1000X than to smuggle the real product. It's nearly impossible for amateurs to properly dilute a powder like this, so the end product has a lot of "hot spots" that lead to overdose.
    - potato3732842 1y ago
      They're sold as some other known opiod and the dealers typically try to dose them to be equivalent because that's all they're getting paid for. There is no incentive to give out "free drugs", not least because you might kill an otherwise paying customer.
      - lurk2 1y ago
potato3732842 1y ago
Unless you do something so heinous it captivates the public or have a bunch of priors the only crimes that reliably will put you away for that kind of time are ones that the government takes specific offense to. Usually that means ignoring their monopoly on violence but seeing as this guy is behind bars for dealing and not murder I'd bet he just got unlucky and happened to sell the dose that some more equal animal or their relative OD'd on.
Aurornis 1y ago
> Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession. The sentence was for intent to distribute. It's an extremely potent substance. This would be like discovering someone had 30,000 pills. You can't really argue that it was for personal use at that point. They also found him in possession of carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl), scales, baggies, and other products. This looks like a very clear case of someone importing high-potency synthetic opioids to redistribute. High potency synthetic opioids are a high priority target for law enforcement. These are most often cut (diluted) and then sold to buyers expecting some other opioid product. As you might expect, perfectly diluting a 1mg dose of a powder into a 500mg - 1000mg pill form is extremely hard to do and there's a high risk of "hot spots" forming in certain pills (or sections of a powdered product). This results in a lot of serious overdoses. It's a severe problem right now. Most fentanyl overdoses are from users who thought they were taking some other drug. They might have even "tested" it before, but missed the hot spots.
- Reasoning 1y ago
  I'll add on, he mentions in his blog that he was making "tens of thousands of dollars a week" selling drugs. He was not a small time dealer and certainly wasn't just buying drugs for himself. His current sentence also (15-30 years) isn't his first prison sentence. He was released and reoffended which absolutely contributed to the longer sentence.
- rustcleaner 1y ago
  15-30 years is a bit heavy for 30 million doses even. 1.5-3 years is way more fair. 15-30 years of adulthood is like putting your child in timeout for 6 to 12 years (childhood being 0-19)! Is there anything your child could do to spend half his childhood living in a concrete room, maximum grounding? This is what we are doing to a man. No. 12 years is public school length so that should be the life sentence, in the interest of keeping government in check. Think it's unfair in your case? Murder him when he gets out and serve your 12. Or... get over it, life goes on, etc. :^)
  - computably 1y ago
skeeter2020 1y ago
in addition to the other comments, this was also not his first conviction. They get extremely punative.
sexy_seedbox 1y ago
In Singapore, it's the death penalty.
jldugger 1y ago
Preston's recent interview with the changelog podcast[1] explains that he's been convicted twice. Repeat offenders don't usually get light treatments. [1]: https://changelog.com/podcast/642 https://changelog.com/podcast/642

brabel 1y ago

In Northern Europe you get less than that for murder.

pookha 1y ago
Unlikely...He's an incredibly callous individual that was cutting drugs with a substance orders of magnitude more dangerous than fentanyl so he could drive an Audi and live the high life. Given that they tied several deaths back to his operation, and that it was a multi-state joint effort, I doubt he'd get a slap on the wrist by a European judges.
- glommer 1y ago
  was an incredibly callous individual.
- rqmedes 1y ago
  Agreed $&@!& him, and any company hires him

zaphar 1y ago

I don't know. If you are in posession of enough of a controlled substance to kill 300 people I'm kind of okay with a drastic response. For every Preston Thorpe who turns their life around there 100s of others who will just go out and keep endangering lives like this. I think this is a nuanced topic and 10-30 years is too much for drug possession is entirely lacking the necessary nuance to evaluate. Comparison to other crimes is not particularly useful either without going into the relative harms of each as compared to the harms of the other.

stickfigure 1y ago
"enough of a controlled substance to kill" is an absurd, inflammatory metric. They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers and we have no reason to believe he was trying to kill anyone. He shouldn't be in prison, period.
- zurfer 1y ago
  Drug dealers should face prison time. They know that they are breaking the law and potentially ruining lifes for their own profit.
- simulator5g 1y ago
  I really doubt he told the buyers this was synthetic BS, more likely he lied to all his customers about the substance and thus could have killed them due to mis-dosing...
- Aurornis 1y ago
  > They guy was selling a good to willing and aware buyers In general, high-potency opioids are cut (diluted) with other powders and then sold as a different product to unsuspecting buyers. Most fentanyl overdoses are from people who thought they were consuming a different, more familiar opioid. Fentanyl and other synthetic opioids like this one are preferred by drug dealers because it's much easier to smuggle a tiny amount of powder and cut it 1000X than to smuggle the real product. It's nearly impossible for amateurs to properly dilute a powder like this, so the end product has a lot of "hot spots" that lead to overdose.
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    They're sold as some other known opiod and the dealers typically try to dose them to be equivalent because that's all they're getting paid for. There is no incentive to give out "free drugs", not least because you might kill an otherwise paying customer.
    - lurk2 1y ago

potato3732842 1y ago

Unless you do something so heinous it captivates the public or have a bunch of priors the only crimes that reliably will put you away for that kind of time are ones that the government takes specific offense to. Usually that means ignoring their monopoly on violence but seeing as this guy is behind bars for dealing and not murder I'd bet he just got unlucky and happened to sell the dose that some more equal animal or their relative OD'd on.

Aurornis 1y ago

> Wow, 15-30 years seems like an insane amount of time for drug possession. The sentence was for intent to distribute. It's an extremely potent substance. This would be like discovering someone had 30,000 pills. You can't really argue that it was for personal use at that point. They also found him in possession of carfentanil (a more potent version of fentanyl), scales, baggies, and other products. This looks like a very clear case of someone importing high-potency synthetic opioids to redistribute. High potency synthetic opioids are a high priority target for law enforcement. These are most often cut (diluted) and then sold to buyers expecting some other opioid product. As you might expect, perfectly diluting a 1mg dose of a powder into a 500mg - 1000mg pill form is extremely hard to do and there's a high risk of "hot spots" forming in certain pills (or sections of a powdered product). This results in a lot of serious overdoses. It's a severe problem right now. Most fentanyl overdoses are from users who thought they were taking some other drug. They might have even "tested" it before, but missed the hot spots.

Reasoning 1y ago
I'll add on, he mentions in his blog that he was making "tens of thousands of dollars a week" selling drugs. He was not a small time dealer and certainly wasn't just buying drugs for himself. His current sentence also (15-30 years) isn't his first prison sentence. He was released and reoffended which absolutely contributed to the longer sentence.
rustcleaner 1y ago
15-30 years is a bit heavy for 30 million doses even. 1.5-3 years is way more fair. 15-30 years of adulthood is like putting your child in timeout for 6 to 12 years (childhood being 0-19)! Is there anything your child could do to spend half his childhood living in a concrete room, maximum grounding? This is what we are doing to a man. No. 12 years is public school length so that should be the life sentence, in the interest of keeping government in check. Think it's unfair in your case? Murder him when he gets out and serve your 12. Or... get over it, life goes on, etc. :^)
- computably 1y ago

skeeter2020 1y ago

in addition to the other comments, this was also not his first conviction. They get extremely punative.

sexy_seedbox 1y ago

In Singapore, it's the death penalty.

jldugger 1y ago

Preston's recent interview with the changelog podcast[1] explains that he's been convicted twice. Repeat offenders don't usually get light treatments. [1]: https://changelog.com/podcast/642 https://changelog.com/podcast/642