Virginia Republican legislators are looking at updating and tightening Virginia law regarding fentanyl deaths.

Under current case law, it is difficult to charge a drug dealer with the murder of a user who died from fentanyl they had purchased unless they are in the proximity of that dealer, according to GOP legislators.

Thus:

State Senate Minority Leader Ryan McDougle, R-New Kent, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that Virginia hopes to address that legislative insufficiency.
“This [new] [law] would say if you sell the drugs, it doesn’t matter if you’re in physical proximity,” he said.

When a person is killed in the course of a crime of which he’s a victim or bystander, all of the participants in that crime are as guilty of murder as is the one who did the actual killing. This is well established case law.

It’s eminently sensible that participants in a drug activity (and not just involving fentanyl) during the course of which or as a result of which a person is killed by the drug should all be guilty of the murder as is the individual who was proximately involved in that killing. Bullets and knives have, in the main, pretty prompt effects from having been delivered in the moment. Drugs, though, have prompt effects when taken, the taking often is delayed. Hence the need to expand that proximity to the dealer bit. The drugs the dealer delivered might well have their prompt effect later, when the addict takes the metaphorical bullet/knife stab.

Unfortunately, though, this law has little chance of passage in the current Virginia legislative session: the Progressive-Democratic Party will hold a one-seat majority after a pair of special elections are completed. Party has shown over the last four years that it has no stomach for punishing criminals, lacking even the stomach to hold them in jail pending trial, or even to bring them to trial at all.