"Non-violent drug crimes" brings to mind hippies selling weed or mushrooms. But this guy was selling carfentanil. I'm not saying he's to blame for the opioid crisis turning street people into shambling zombies, clogging emergency services with overdoses, and causing death, but he certainly played a part.

He played a lot smaller part than the Sackler family, who ran Purdue Pharma and pushed their drugs into communities. They killed a lot more people than this guy, and yet none of them are in jail.

The Sacklers are comfortably above the law and that's a bad thing, but that doesn't make small time carfentanyl operations any less bad

Evil is a threshold, it's not a competition with limited spots

Sometimes big crime families or notorious serial killers get away with it, but it doesn't lower the threshold for anyone else

It doesn't make it any better that someone else is doing even worse. You don't get to do a little crime, as a treat

Focus on the bad thing, not piling on the guy who is serving his sentence (while also making a new life for himself).

I wouldn't say he's piling on him, just replying to the guy aboowho made it sound like this guy is in jail for smoking weed.

A few years ago they would have been in jail. Pick the wrong state you still could end up in jail.

Punishing is always a recipe for they punishment going back to society

"You don't get to do a little crime, as a treat"

Why not? I much prefer a society in which I can get away with some crimes to one where every crime is prosecuted.

Discretionary enforcement is just used as a way to disguise discrimination

Perhaps our laws would be fairer and simpler if enforcement were draconian and uniform

Very interesting spectrum you’re suggesting

The Singapore way

Better a potentially discriminatory society I'm the ingroup in, than a totalitarian utopia where every criminal rule is enforced mercilessly.

Only a minuscule portion of actual crime comes to the attention of the state.

Evil is a religious concept.

Selling drugs isn't evil. Not selling drug doesn't make you good. People take drugs for various reasons. If a doctor sells them they are good but if someone else sells them they are evil?

The person buying could have been fired and can't afford Doctors prescription so the person selling could be an angel.

A doctor that over-prescribes them would be arrested, too. Or one that prescribed it to someone for a non-medical reason. (There are many of those latter docs.)

People that sell fentanyl (or similar) are very bad for society, to avoid the triggering "evil". Look how many people have died in the last 10 years. It's insane.

EDIT: I personally know a young man that died from a fent overdose and it's likely he didn't know what he took had fent in it. 22 years old and the whole world ahead him. Completely destroyed his family.

They would be arrested for over prescribing now. If you look at the state of the world 20 years ago or more it looks much different from here.

Evil is a moral concept, which is less tied to religion these days.

Drugs are an anti-social drain on society, that sickens its buyers, turning them into zombies or criminals, and turns the sellers into greedy, violent people who corrupt law enforcement.

Your edge case of an angel doesn't translate to the actual realities of drug trafficking and addiction.

Fentanyl takes the fun out of drugs and since its laced in every street drug these days it means that no drug is safe anymore.

It cannot be understated how harmful fentanyl is and how low quality of a drug it is. Low quality as in the high sucks.

(I've never taken drugs and I don't drink)

> Evil is a threshold, it's not a competition with limited spots

No, but our enforcement has limited resources. We can't arrest and jail every offender of every crime, so we pick and choose where to spend our enforcement resources. All the money spent pursuing, arresting, trying, and imprisoning this guy could have been spent going after people like the Sacklers.

Bush and his cronies resulted in the death of far more innocent people than your typical murderer. But we don't stop sending murderers to prison just because Bush/Cheney are not in prison.

I've voted for drug legalization (including possession). However, that doesn't mean that I condone all drug dealing behavior.

Whataboutism. Selling the drug he was peddling kills people. Lots of people. This is not a “no victims” crime.

EDIT: another commentor found that it was MDMA and weed, so this discussion is purely theoretical and doesn’t apply to OP.

MDMA and weed was his initial sentence. He's in prison now for selling synthetic opioids.

Yes, they should be in jail for longer than he is.

It took something like a decade to put Capone away. We still locked up murderers during that period.

The whole thread is silly. I don't think a lot of people here are going to stick up for a 15 year stretch for a 24 year old for selling opiates. Probably don't need to pull the Sacklers into it.

I don't think it is silly to be reminded of the inequalities of our penal system.

> But this guy was selling carfentanil

Do you have a source? It seems that guy was selling MDMA and marijuana. Here's the relevant quote from https://pthorpe92.dev/intro/my-story/

I was caught with MDMA coming in the mail from Vancouver, and some marijuana coming from california (the latter of which is what I am currently serving my time for right now)

Gluing a few stories together (links included below where I'm not citing to your link) it seems like:

~2012 he was caught selling MDMA and marijuana, and went to prison

~end or 2015 or start of 2016 he was released on probation

[Edit: Added entry] December 2016 police responding to a domestic violence call enter his apartment to make contact with the alleged victim, and discover U-47700 (a synthetic opioid) https://www.courts.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt471/files/docu...

April 2017 the police find traces of carfentanil while executing a search warrant at his place - plausibly but not provably linked to some recent carfentanil deaths - and police announce they are searching for him. https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/man-wanted-suspected-let...

May 2017 he ends up back in prison.

Aug 2017 he pleads guilty to possession of U47700 (a synthetic opioid) with intent to distribute https://www.wmur.com/article/defense-plans-appeal-of-search-...

Oct 2017 he's sentenced to 15-30 years on the above charge, he has not been charged with possessing the carfentanil (yet) despite the apparent evidence https://www.wmur.com/article/man-facing-carfentanil-charge-r...

The articles aren't clear on this, but given his own recounting I assume that a suspended sentence for Marijuana was un-suspended as a result of the new charges and he is serving that sentence first, or concurrently.

Or he's downplaying the seriousness of the crime. Thanks for digging!

> He was picked up for breaking his girlfriend’s arm, a detail that’s missing from his own apologies.

From elsewhere in the thread:

* https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...

* https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/preston-thorpe-sentenc...

I find it somewhat amusing that I woke up to this post at ~9 AM, and was surprised at the crowding-out of discussion about the article, by people sort of half-groping at a straw or two they picked up, trying to make a definitive case on his...goodness? morality?...based off the straw they're holding.

It is now 4 PM, about to clock out for the day because I gotta wait for CI run thats >30m. I come back here and it's still going on. This is #3 comment I see when I open HN, ensuing thread takes up two pages scrolls on 16" MBP.

It's bad of me to write this because, well, who cares? Additionally, am I trying to litigate what other people comment?

The root feeling driving me to express myself is a form of frustrated boredom -- rolling with that and verbalizing concretely, a bunch of people writing comments with the one thing they're hyperfocusing on their record to drive a conclusion on their value as a person/morality, and then people pointing out that's not some moral absolute, asking for links, discussing the links...

...well, it's all just clutter.

Or YouTube comment-level discussion, unless we're planning on relitigating every case he's been involved in.

This all would be better if it the kangaroo court stuff was confined to a thread with all of the evidence against him, so we didn't have a bunch of weak cases, or if people didn't treat this as an opportunity to be a drive by judge. Article def. ain't about his crimes, and he ain't saying he's innocent or an angel.

(and the idea that "drug crimes" implies "hippie selling weed or psychedelics" so calling them "drug crimes" is hiding the ball...where does that come from? Its especially dissonant b/c you indicate the mere fact he sold an opiod is so bad that this guy is...bad? irredeemable? not worth discussing?...so presumably you care a lot about opiods, so presumably you know that's whats driven drug crime the last, uh, decade or two?)

> trying to make a definitive case on his...goodness? morality?

Speaking for myself, I'm actually just discussing the idea that a non-violent crime like drug dealing necessarily deserves a light sentence in general.

> Sounds like a you thing

It is a me thing. That's why I said "brings to mind".

I'm a product of my time. I remember when weed and psychedelics meant demonization and heavy sentences, and it was absurd because those substances aren't that dangerous.

This is the context in which I'm accustomed to calling drug dealing a "non-violent crime". So, I feel like I need to point out that things are not quite the same with deadly drugs like carfentanil.

They are largely the same though. Small-time dealing of any drug is often just being the guy in your circle of users that does the group buying, maybe it was just your turn. Or your dealer says you can pay for your purchase by driving this package across town. Now you've been caught with enough pills to kill 30 people and the intent to distribute - is that an action that hits your threshold for heavy sentences and bad people?

No but this whole discussion hits my threshold on what the extent of government should be, and people need a lot more sovereignty from police/court harrassment than they get now. We live in a totalitarian police state and have for about a century now.

The state needs to get out of domestic warfare, war on drugs, war on poverty, war on crime, quit abusing its customers (aka "criminals"), and stick only to killing and oppressing foreign tribes! Put a 12 year cap on sentences, the state should have no right to take the life of its customer even if the taking is placing in a box. Also I would like to see UBI go to released felons first as well as the vote, as they have seen significant economic sequelae and injustice at the hands of the state!

Oh absolutely. Voters always favor harsher punishments or making things worse for those already convicted of crimes. You never get any more votes by pushing for lower punishments for any crime or by doing anything to reduce recidivism. I suspect that a pretty solid litmus test for "politician who is actually trying to make the world a better place" based just on how they vote for lowering recidivism.

Justification to abolish democracy, and because everything else is worse I guess we're going to have to go to a voluntarist ancap NAP-respecting society!

I agree with you. This is a crazy high sentence (15-30). But worth nothing that the fact pattern behind it was also pretty crazy.

And you take personal responsibility if someone innocent is convicted? Once you have executed someone there is no coming back. Or are you saying you're OK with some innocents being killed so you can save some money (taxes)?

>Once you have executed someone there is no coming back.

Once you've taken 10 years of someone's life there is no giving that back either. As technology progresses the cost of recording evidence will go down which will help convict and prove the innocence of people.

> As technology progresses the cost of recording evidence will go down which will help convict and prove the innocence of people.

Minority Report is a counterfactual to this claim. The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed. Technology is a tool to extend one’s grasp to meet one’s reach, and vice versa, and is a tool that serves power. Those with power are best able to bend tools to their ends, just or unjust.

> It is the duty of the poor to support and sustain the rich in their power and idleness. In doing so, they have to work before the laws' majestic equality, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France

It takes 5-25 years is the USA to execute a person. Someone can argue what is worse: to live 20 more years in prison or to be executed.

Sure, some people might say that. I’d say that’s also quite cruel, and that there might be a third option that’s better than both.

Say that to the people he killed selling those drugs. This isn't weed, it's highly lethal pills.

If he killed anyone he should be charged with murder or manslaughter.

Many dealers and addicts who are involved in extremely violent crimes are plead down to drug crimes after having been charged with both drug and violent crimes.

https://www.courts.nh.gov/sites/g/files/ehbemt471/files/docu...

>"On December 24, 2016, three Manchester police officers responded to an apartment following a report of a domestic dispute. The report was made by the mother of Ashley Arbogast, who advised that her daughter had called her Stating that her boyfriend had broken her arm during an argument."

Ok, but we should punish people for the crimes they're convicted of, not the crimes we've decided for ourselves they committed.

He is being punished for what he was convicted of; whether you agree with the penalty or not. If we do change the penalties, the convictions will change too.

I just wanted to point out that there is clear evidence that this individual was involved in at least one violent act, as is often the case with ‘non-violent drug convicts’.

Any yet there are coke-cola machines everywhere including inside police stations which kills more people each year.

And only one company is allowed to import the specific leaves/material (coca leafs). The government restricts everyone from importing them unless it's one of the biggest companies in the world.

McDonalds had a location inside the hospital in my metro area. For at least decades, they finally left that location during covid, sometime.

i can't even, and it sounds made up.

A person can have an occasional Coke and it's perfectly fine. Fentanyl, not so much.

He didn't kill anyone, unless he misrepresented the product and the customer used the product incorrectly and died as a result. Even then there's argument for tainted product and considering the persecution around the industry, I as a juror would acquit any charge reliant on that as the underlying logic. Even then, if I foresaw more than 12 years sentence for anyone I would acquit and jury nullify on human rights grounds. Humans must be free. The big moral failure of modern states is their lack of unmolested opt-out.

People like big strong dominating government until it gets replaced with the Mormon church, or a Caliphate, then nooo it's not statesmanship but just religion. (Hint: all states are religions, and codes are religious texts. What do freedom of religion and freedom of association mean in this context, instead of the toothless safe-for-government one you're used to thinking of it in?)