Fair enough.. Consider yourself forgiven.. :D

I was going to address your comments one by one, as I am wont to do, but I get the jist of your overall theme/question.

What if the drugs were legal??

Mind-blowing aside... :D It would negate my entire argument..

At least, my initial argument. The follow-up argument on the liquor store owner illegally selling hooch to someone would become dead on..

If it were legal to sell heroin, then the "dealers" should not be held liable for any deaths that occurred, all things being equal. By that, I mean, if there was some negligence in preparation or what have you..

To sum it up, it's the law of the land that, if you are committing an illegal act and someone dies during the commission, you can (and SHOULD) be charged with murder, even if you personally had nothing to do with the act...

Many examples of this exists in jurisprudence in the here and now...

Your example of guns is a relevant one, but forgive me if I'm going to ignore it. Parallels do indeed exist in the two cases, but it muddies the waters of the debate, I feel. Let's concentrate on the liquor store owner instead.

Not to blow your mind or anything, but what if heroin were legal? What if you could walk into the pharmacy of your choice and order up a dose of heroin, and receive a product you knew was chemically pure and of a stated strength, so no accidental overdose was possible?

I realize that's a radical concept, but it was also the way America operated for over half of its history. A dose of heroin might have run you 5 cents at the turn of the 20th century. Like I said, mind-blowing, but even you would have to admit that it would completely remove the profit motive from the drug industry (both legal and illegal) when it was so cheap.

So -- positing this world where there were no laws against selling pure heroin -- again, of a known quantity, strength, and purity -- would the seller of such a drug be held responsible if the user intentionally used it to overdose? Why, or why not? (see your own gun example, as a thought exercise)

Two things to consider. One, I feel it would be impossible to hold a liquor store owner responsible if a completely sober patron came in and bought a few half-gallons of booze, and then either (1) intentionally drank him or herself to death, or (2) got so blind drunk they drove and killed a pedestrian. The concept of "responsibility" seems to have ended for the store owner, in either case -- thus meaning the law should not charge them with anything.

Now, of course, a tavern owner who keeps serving a patron while they get drunker and drunker would be a different thing, legally, if they drove and killed a pedestrian afterwards. Differing amounts of responsibility, being the server of the alcohol in question.

But, to return to my list: Two, almost all overdoses in America today fall into three categories: (1) a new user, who doesn't know what the heck they're doing, (2) impurities (poison) in the product sold (heroin sold on the street can be anywhere from 5% pure to maybe 20 or 30% pure, the rest is any crap which looks like the same white powder), or (3) a user getting a much-stronger purity than they are used to -- if they're used to 5% and they suddenly score 25%, they're going to think they're taking a safe dose and in fact kill themselves.

So, in which of these should the dealer be held responsible -- in my world where heroin is legal? In other words, treat it like a liquor store owner of today. In instance (1), perhaps. Instructions and dosage should be provided, as with any prescription drug today, and if that information is false or not provided, then maybe the seller is legally liable. In instance (2), definitely. Not much "bathtub gin" is sold today, and anyone who sells moonshine which is nothing more than wood alcohol should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for not providing a clean and safe product. I'd even agree that murder or at the very least reckless endangerment charges would apply.

But instance (3) -- the largest instance of overdoses today (look it up) -- would simply not exist if heroin were sold by pharmacies. Purity would be right on the label. Everyone would know exactly what they were getting.

Here's a better subject to look up: "laudanum". Before the early 20th century, this was how most people took opium. Oh, sure, there was the exotic nature of "opium dens" and the Chinese, but when most people went down to their pharmacist (or apothecary, if you want to go back that far), they just bought a bottle of laudanum. Over-the-counter, I might add -- no prescription necessary. Was this a problem? Well, in some ways. Like the Rolling Stones immortal "Mother's Little Helper," many housewives (and many others in society, to be fair) became addicts.

Here's the key difference: were these housewives thrown in jail? No, they were not. Were the pharmacists thrown in jail? No, they were not. Did the federal government spend trillions of dollars to stamp the problem out? No, they did not. Did the housewives commit crimes to feed their habit? No, they did not -- because it was safe, pure, and cheaply available to them, therefore they did not have to commit property crimes to support their habit.

OK, so this has been a screed. Sorry about that. I'm not arguing here for the immediate legalization of heroin or morphine or any other opiate (although Ron and Rand Paul might...). But I am trying to get you to see that the world of the "War On (Some) Drugs" we live in today is not the only world that has ever existed.

If your logic were applied to the alcohol industry, then beer barons would be fine, but any distiller of high-proof hooch would be in jeopardy of being charged at any time with various manslaughter or murder charges. And that just doesn't seem like the way to go, for me.

If Holder is serious, then he needs to address the problem of Draconian charges for low-level dealers which some US Attorneys seem to be using these days. Because otherwise, the whole thing is just an exercise in hypocrisy, it seems.

OK. End rant.

-CW

The same can not be said for selling heroin..

To put your "hooch" example in the proper context of selling heroin, it would be as if the liquor store owner sold hooch to someone he knew was under 21 and that person drank it elsewhere, drove and killed him/herself or someone else...

In that case, the store owner would (or SHOULD) definitely be held liable...

Just as drug dealers should...

What about the gun store that sells guns to a mother, whose mentally deficient son takes those guns and shoots up an elementary school??

Maybe, with my background, I am reading too much into it..

But, what I take away from what your wrote is that, in the case of death of a user, prosecutors are going to go after the supply chain for murder..

Now, I really don't have a problem with that and I am surprised that anyone would...

Basically, what the prosecutors are saying is that, if you sell drugs and your drugs can be tied to the death of your users, then you are going down for murder..

Again, I don't have a problem with that whatsoever...

Both spoke approvingly of stricter penalties for dealers after a user dies of an overdose.

Good! Those are the kinds of prosecutors we need..