Working on databases from prison

Great story, I wish this inspired more prisons around the world to follow suit.

For those who don't want to hit Google, the conviction was for possessing 30g of a synthetic opioid "U-47700". A normal dose is ~1mg, 10mg can be deadly (so this was 30000 trips or killing 3000).

The drug became illegal across the US on November 14, 2016.

"Police said they found the drug in Thorpe’s apartment in Manchester in December 2016" (https://apnews.com/general-news-d68dca63e95946fbb9cc82f38540...)

"Preston Thorpe, age 25, was sentenced by the Hillsborough County Superior Court (Northern District) to 15 to 30 years stand committed in the New Hampshire State Prison for possession of the controlled drug 3,4-dicholo-N-[2-(dimethylamino)-cyclohexyl]-N-methylbenzamide (also known as "U-47700") with the intent to distribute. U-47700 is a synthetic opioid that is classified as a Schedule I drug." (https://www.doj.nh.gov/news-and-media/preston-thorpe-sentenc...)

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?

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.

"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.

> 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.

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.