Big Brother 9 winner Adam Jasinski is facing up to 20 years behind bars and up to $1 million in fines for allegedly attempting to sell 2,000 oxycodone pills to an undercover government witness, according to the Associated Press and TV Guide.
Jasinski, 31, admitted in an affidavit to using the $500,000 he won on Big Brother to fund a drug habit, according to the AP saying he'd been selling drugs along the east cost for several months -- presumably to fund his habit after the $500,000 ran out. He was arrested by prohibition agents with the US DEA on Saturday after flying to Boston and showing the witness a sock containing two plastic bags filled with oxycodone.
Agents did not provide estimates of how much oxycodone trafficking goes undetected, nor any indication of whether Jasinski's arrest is likely to reduce the non-prescription availability of oxycodone.
Drug policy reformers regard Jasinski as a victim of drug prohibition, in more ways than one. "Oxycodone pills have only a minimal expense to produce, but prohibiting them has driven up the price for those buying them illegally, because of the risk that sellers face if they are caught," David Borden, executive director of StoptheDrugWar.org, told the Drug War Chronicle newsletter. "That means that people with serious addictions can go through large amounts of savings pretty quickly. For those who are really hurting, desperate but lucrative measures like prostitution or selling some of the drugs can be the only means they have for relief."
Borden continued, "In Jasinski's case, this has led him to become subject to the same harsh prohibition laws that made his habit so costly in the first place. But it won't make the drugs harder to get for anyone else -- if 20 year sentences accomplished that, we wouldn't have a drug problem by now. The answer is some form of legalization, and in the meantime not throwing people away like Jasinski who merely walked down the path we created for them with our prohibition laws."
