Small-fry drug dealer ordered to pay $5.8 million for distributing deadly fake Percocet
Prison not sufficient deterrent?
Alexandra Capelouto was 20 years old when she died after taking fake Percocet. She had obtained the pills from another 20-year-old, Brandon McDowell, who sold her fentanyl-plus-filler pills instead of the prescription-only drug she had requested.
In 2022, McDowell pleaded guilty to possessing fentanyl with intent to distribute and he was sentenced to nine years in prison. Capelouto’s parents, feeling that justice had not been served, decided to press things further.
“For taking somebody's life, that was not a fair sentence," Matt Capelouto said.
He filed a wrongful death suit, and the Superior Court of Riverside County ruled against McDowell, finding that he had sold harmful narcotics with “willful and malicious” intent that led to Capelouto’s death. McDowell has now been hit with a $5.8 million judgment, in what Capelouto's lawyer, Baruch Cohen, believes is the first time a drug dealer has been held civilly liable for a person’s death.
Here's the hope that this judgment will be the shot that's heard around the world, so to speak. Because if it inhibits another drug deal from going down, where the drug dealer ... realizes that besides the jail sentence, he is liable for millions of dollars of damages, maybe he'll think twice.
Six in ten young people unaware of fentanyl's dangers
Matt Capelouto has also founded a nonprofit organization, Stop Drug Homicide, which advocates for more legislation to hold drug dealers accountable. Specifically, he is pushing for the passage of Alexandra’s Law, which would require a formal warning to be given to anyone convicted of a drug-related offense, telling them that they could be charged with murder if someone dies after taking a drug they distributed.
As things currently stand, obtaining a wrongful death conviction in many states is not always simple in such cases, as it has to be proved that the dealer knew that the drugs he was supplying could kill. While knowledge of the dangers of fentanyl is widespread, surveys have suggested that as many as 60 percent of young people (the so-called Gen Z) are still unaware of those dangers, and only 48 percent have ever heard of fentanyl being used in fake prescription drugs.
These fakes can appear very convincing.
Pharma knows how to fight against generic imitations. Why not against fentanyl lookalikes too?
Furthermore, fentanyl’s effects can be quite similar to what one would expect from certain legitimate drugs, primarily prescription opioids, as long as the dosage is kept low. And low means very low — just two milligrams of fentanyl can be lethal. According to the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration), fake pills have been found containing anything between 0.02 and 5.1 milligrams per tablet, and 42 percent of pills tested for fentanyl contained at least 2 mg.
Nonetheless, McDowell’s conviction raises several questions with broader implications.
Did Alexandra Capelouto know that what she was buying might not be genuine Percocet? Did she have a responsibility to ensure, herself, that what she was taking was safe, given that she was obtaining what she thought was a legal drug in an illegal manner?
Why do not pharmaceutical companies introduce features in drugs to identify them clearly as genuine? Why does the FDA not mandate such features?
