In this Monday, March 17, 2014 photo, Patty DiRenzo holds a picture of her son, Salvatore Marchese, in her home in Blackwood, N.J. Salvatore died from a heroin overdose in 2010. Last month, Republican Rep. Tom Reed of New York introduced legislation that hearkened back to what critics call one of the worst relics of the "war on drugs." The legislation would allow federal prosecutors to charge drug dealers with life in prison or the death penalty when they can connect the dealer to an overdose death caused by heroin laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid painkiller 50 times stronger than pure heroin. In the midst of a national overdose crisis and after a summer marked by a flood of overdose...
↧