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Should drug dealers behind fatal overdoses be charged with manslaughter?
- Yes
- No
State lawmakers are considering a bill that would make selling, delivering, or otherwise administering a controlled substance eligible for manslaughter charges if someone later dies from an overdose.
Under current law, a person who provides an illicit drug that results in death can typically only be charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance, a non-violent felony.
The bill would be named “Chelsey’s Law,” in honor of Chelsey Murray, a 31-year-old Long Island resident from Suffolk County who died from a fentanyl overdose in August 2022.
Murray’s death was one of more than 400 in Suffolk County that year that resulted from drug overdoses, many from fentanyl, according to the district attorney’s office.
The powerful, synthetic opioid is similar to morphine, but is 80 to 100 times stronger. It's used in hospitals to treat pain during and after surgery.
But the drug is also abused, with many drug dealers adding it to heroin or disguising it as common prescription drugs like Percocet, leading to a growing number of overdose deaths across the United States, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Nationwide, more than 110,000 lives were lost to fentanyl poisoning in 2022. Seven out of every 10 pills sold on the streets are surreptitiously laced with the drug, the DEA said.
“Opioid overdose is the leading cause of death for young people aged 18-50. This is a crisis,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney.
On Monday, Jan. 8, Tierney traveled to Albany joined by Nassau County DA Anne Donnelly and dozens of members of Suffolk County law enforcement, labor unions, and community activists to urge lawmakers to support the bill, which is part of a bipartisan legislative package aimed at curbing overdoses.
“While legislation will never be the sole solution, these commonsense changes will save lives. It is our moral and ethical duty, at the very least, to ask each of our elected officials to consider these bills,” Tierney said.
“Work with us. More importantly, listen to and talk to these families. What New York is doing now is not working and young people are dying at alarming rates.”
The legislative package includes three additional bills that would:
- Make Xylazine – or “Tranq” – a controlled substance. The drug was found in over 15 percent of fatal overdose cases in Suffolk County in 2023.
- Make families of overdose victims eligible for financial compensation from the state.
- Allow prosecutors to seek bail in cases where defendants are charged with selling or possessing less than eight ounces of fentanyl.
The bills are being sponsored by Assemblyman Steve Stern (D-Dix Hills) and Senators Dean Murray (R-Patchogue), Anthony Palumbo (R-Riverhead), and Steven D. Rhoads (R-Massapequa).
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