California prosecutors charge fentanyl suppliers with murder. The legally unsettled approach is catching on.

Prosecutors in California are forging a path to make fentanyl dealers accountable for their part in overdose deaths by filing homicide charges against them. In Riverside County, California, county district attorney Mike Hestrin "has charged 34 suspected fentanyl suppliers with murder and is said to be the first prosecutor in California to achieve a guilty verdict from a jury in a fentanyl-related homicide trial," reports Michael Corkery of The New York Times. Some critics fault the prosecution of street dealers "as a misguided return to the aggressive approaches of the 1990s, which failed to curb drug use and swelled state prison populations."

But even in boldly liberal parts of the state, murder investigations of fentanyl overdoses are being used to discourage fentanyl sales and provide some level of justice for families. Corkery writes, "Some other counties — like San Diego and Placer, near Sacramento — that have also brought murder charges against fentanyl suppliers have sizable numbers of conservative-minded voters who tend to favor more punitive approaches to crime." Even in San Francisco, the district attorney's office is planning to prosecute fentanyl dealers for overdose deaths.

While prosecutors pursue murder charges against fentanyl dealers, their cases are on murky legal ground. "Prosecutors have been working around the fact that California does not have a law that specifically allows fentanyl deaths to be charged as murders," Corkery explains. 

Defense attorneys have responded to the prosecutions as "overbroad and unconstitutional," Corkery reports. But their complaints are being drowned out. "Parents whose children died from fentanyl are a driving force behind new laws and stepped-up prosecutions just as the parents of drunken-driving victims swayed the nation to crack down on alcohol-fueled traffic deaths decades ago."

To read more on how California prosecutors are using the Watson murder rule to prosecute fentanyl suppliers, click here. 

Drug Enforcement Administration statistics draw a startling picture of fentanyl's lethal power: It is the leading cause of death for Americans ages 18 to 45, and it's responsible for nearly 70 percent of the United States' 107,000+ drug overdose deaths in the past year. A educational warning video is shared below.