Federal prosecutor Brian Higgins compared someone using or selling fentanyl to playing Russian roulette.
Justice Mark Poland agreed with that analogy but said it still didn’t make what Sarnia resident Kyle Thompson was caught doing – trying to sell nearly 120 grams of crystal meth – any less dangerous.
“The trafficking of methamphetamine is more like slicing someone with a knife. Death and destruction still occurs, but the destruction, death and despair that emanates from it is more a death of a thousand cuts. It’s a cruel, harsh, tortuous outcome,” the judge said.
The Sarnia judge pointed out the street drug is regularly linked to mental-health disorders, crime, homelessness and devastation for the users, their families and the rest of the community.
“Fentanyl kills a lot of people, and it does it quickly. Methamphetamine damages, destroys a lot of people as well. It just does it in a more slow and insidious fashion,” Poland said.
Those comments came amid Thompson’s long-awaited sentencing after he was caught with $11,000 of the illegal stimulant, along with $2,600 in cash, in March 2020. He was arrested during a traffic stop after police found 119 grams hidden in a red Naloxone kit under the driver’s seat of a silver Volkswagen Jetta. Officers also seized four grams of cocaine and 20 Oxycodone tablets.
Higgins and defense lawyer Luigi Perzia both suggested a two-year conditional sentence featuring house arrest and GPS tracking. Poland said he would have imposed a longer sentence due to the large amount of the drug, but acknowledged that, based on a 2016 Supreme Court decisionit didn’t pass the test for a judge to reject a joint submission.
Thompson, 32, promised Poland he’d abide by all the conditions if he’s allowed to serve his sentence at home.
“This conditional sentence is not to be trifled with,” the judge said to him, cautioning Thompson if he’s caught breaking the rules he could serve the rest of it in a jail cell.
Thompson, who already spent more than a month in jail following his arrest, had a prior criminal record, one Poland called unenviable. Thompson, though, has also been on bail for nearly two years and hasn’t picked up new trafficking charges while going through some personal struggles, the court heard.
Thompson is a longtime drug user who hasn’t put much effort into rehabilitating himself, according to a pre-sentence report, but Poland said, despite his challenges, Thompson is capable of changing his ways.
The sentence also included a one-year probation order, a lifetime weapons ban and a two-year driving ban.