The Derek Chauvin/George Floyd case has deteriorated into such a seething mass of misinformation, distortion, and confusion that little chance exists of ever straightening it out.
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But there is one particular point of contention that really needs to be shut down: that George Floyd had lethally overdosed on fentanyl at the time of his confrontation with Chauvin.
There are a lot of problems with this claim. But apart from the fact that if he had ODed, he wouldn’t have even been moving; apart from the fact that the Hennepin County medical examiner stated that the dose was “potentially lethal” as opposed to lethal per se; and apart from the logic apparent here – that somehow it’s okay to kill somebody if he’s dying already – there is one overriding flaw:
To make this claim is to tell the world that you don’t have any idea how narcotics work.
A major feature of opiates — and their synthetic analogs, the opioids – is a factor called “drug tolerance,” a diminishing of the drug’s effects following prolonged use. Simply put, you need more of the drug to get the same response. The reasons for this are abstruse and complicated, and include such things as the liver adapting to the drug and becoming more efficient at processing it, and the cells affected by the drug becoming less sensitive. Although it’s present in many types of drugs, it’s most notable with the opiates, particularly heroin.
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Drug tolerance involves most effects of a drug having to do with dosage, including lethality. (Years ago, I knew somebody who had become addicted to heroin in NYC, where it was generally “stepped on” – that is, diluted – many times before it reached the city. He traveled to New Orleans, where it came off the boats relatively pure. He was dead within days, after shooting up what he thought was the same amount of junk.)
The process is almost identical in the opioids, which operate much the same as the natural opiates, though they’re far more potent. The potency of this class of drugs is also a factor in drug tolerance. A user will develop a tolerance far more quickly than with opiates, perhaps after only a handful of uses, with the effect being far more extreme. A longtime user of fentanyl could tolerate doses that would kill a novice user immediately.
Which is very likely the case with George Floyd. We know he was using fentanyl. With his street-level life of cheap thrills and complete irresponsibility, there’s little doubt that he was using it regularly and had, as a result, developed a high level of tolerance. That being the case, any notion of a “lethal dose,” or that Floyd was dying anyway at the time he was detained needs to be dropped.
Which is no great loss. The legal arguments for Chauvin’s release are being made on a completely different basis, and the overdose claim adds nothing. In fact, it’s even possible that it could be counterproductive. It seems to me that the overdose argument is being thrown in by Chauvin supporters in the hope that the more you pile on, the better. But law doesn’t work that way. Or life either.
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Image: Minnesota Department of Corrections