Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced Wednesday that he will prosecute a fentanyl dealer for the overdose deaths of his customers in a landmark case for the state.
Law enforcement officers arrested Robert “Juice” Goosby Jr., 27, Wednesday and charged him with two counts of “drug delivery resulting in death” for supplying fentanyl to two men who later overdosed, The Times reported Wednesday. Goosby is in a group of 23 dealers facing felony drug delivery charges, but he is the only one currently being held accountable for the deaths of his customers.
“Yes, they made the choice to buy it, and yes, they made the choice to use it. But I believe that this dealer needs to be held accountable for cutting short the lives of these individuals,” Shapiro said at a press conference. “These individuals mattered in our community.”
Fentanyl, a synthetic form of heroin, is one of the most lethal drugs on the market in the U.S. An adult can fatally overdose after ingesting just 3 milligrams. Beaver County, the county in which Goosby was arrested, has been crippled by the national opioid epidemic and led the state in fentanyl overdose deaths in 2016, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Of the county’s 102 overdose deaths in 2016, 78 of them were fentanyl related. West Virginia held the highest overdose rate in the country in 2015, at 41.5 per 100,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In comparison, Beaver County only has a population of 168,871, putting its rate at 60.4 per 100,000. (RELATED: Chicago Fentanyl Overdoses Rose 600 Percent)
Shapiro also warned that major pharmaceutical companies will also be held accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic, but he did not clarify which companies he would be targeting.
Shapiro is one of several attorneys general to blame big pharma for the opioid epidemic. The industry is facing a deluge of lawsuits from drug-ravaged states across America alleging they encouraged addiction by over-prescribing pills.
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