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Drug counselor who delivered ketamine dose that killed Matthew Perry gets two years
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 16 May 2026
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Oh, in this case it will. It will stop a corrupt guy who makes money out of distributing drugs of dubious origin under the guise of safe recreational use for recovery purposes, from further putting others at risk. For a drug counselor it should be obvious that you should not distribute drugs to addicts under (almost) no circumstance.
Jail isn't what's doing that, revoking his license does. The jail time is just an added slap on the wrist to make the people close to Perry feel better (which is absurd considering a guy literally died, retribution doesn't change that.) It doesn't actually solve anything.
Of course, drug dealers, famously reticent to distributing drugs without license.
That's ignoring the point. Retributive justice is inherently reactive. It doesn't improve upon any of the circumstances or motivations leading to someone committing a crime, thereby limiting it to a response only after it happens. Criminals don't commit crimes simply because they were "born that way". They do it because their life experiences led them to either a) believing they had to commit the crime to improve their situation, b) believing it's justifiable in their own warped sense of right and wrong, or c) severe mental illness. There's nothing in those causes that can't be accounted for or treated beforehand to prevent the act from occurring at all. All jail time is doing is putting them in a pressure cooker that will inevitably lead to the people sentenced being even further handicapped in their ability to function in society.
Mind you I'm not against separating criminals from society for an appropriate amount of time entirely. It's just that if the primary motivation with their sentence is punishment, you shouldn't expect anything greater than a neutral outcome.
Careful there, you are getting dangerously close to pre-crime justifications. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, drug distribution crimes are at the top on risk of re-offending (only bellow financial fraud and related economic crimes, mind you). Now, the other side of the coin is that most people who need mental health care the most, due to risk of violence or harm to self and others, are the ones less likely to willingly seek for it. Now, the US justice system sucks, and isn't more than a slave making machine. However, in this particular case, the only way to ensure the person is not a danger towards others is to pass them through that faulty system. Because it is the only mechanism the system has at hand. I agree that more activism is necessary for a judicial system reform for humane treatment of convicts, and better access to social protections and mental health care opportunities outside of the system. However, that is the ideal world, this is the real world. And right now, just removing their license does nothing. Statistics tells us that he will just switch to be a life coach and keep distributing drugs to addicts, just illegally. Legality has never stopped anyone from doing something.