Drug overdose survivor among 1st in court for dealing fentanyl

In November 2016, Ashley Falconer woke up in a Winnipeg hotel room and found her high-flying, drug dealer boyfriend dead beside her, another in a growing number of fentanyl casualties.

An addict herself and an overdose survivor, Falconer was arrested less than three weeks later in a car with another man in possession of 227 fentanyl blotters, one ounce of methamphetamine and other drugs.

Falconer, 32, pleaded guilty to one count each of possession of fentanyl for the purposes of trafficking and possession of methamphetamine for the purposes of trafficking and was sentenced Wednesday to six and a half years in prison. 

Fentanyl and its spread among illicit drug users has been described as a plague and a national medical emergency. But only now is the drug's impact starting to be felt in the Manitoba court system. 

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Falconer is one of just a handful of Manitobans to be sentenced — all within the last month — for fentanyl trafficking since the drug entered the public consciousness two years ago.

"You had a very graphic, very dear reason to understand the dangerousness of this [drug]," Judge Carena Roller told Falconer. 

"Someone you cared a great deal about died in your company from using this substance. You yourself had overdosed. And yet a few short weeks later ... you are prepared to invite that into other people's lives. I can't imagine anything more deterring than seeing that happen to someone I love. That's a graphic example of the allure and the addiction and the draw of, not only the lifestyle, but of the drug itself."

In a pre-sentence report prepared for court, Falconer described her late boyfriend and former boss as a "high-ranking" drug dealer with ties to Mexican drug cartels.

"He had three homes and five cars and I had Louis Vuitton items," Crown attorney Raegan Rankin quoted Falconer as telling a probation officer. "She said they drove around in his Jaguar and they travelled and they went on shopping excursions."

After her boyfriend died, Falconer was evicted from her apartment and returned to selling drugs to support herself, court was told. 

A police drug expert described Falconer as a "mid-level dealer." The accepted sentencing range for mid-level drug dealers, as set out by the Manitoba Court of Appeal, has been five to eight years. 

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"The question for the court becomes what happens to that range when a new and far more deadly drug arrives in Winnipeg that indiscriminately kills its users as a result of the complete inability to ensure quality control and the potency of these drugs," Rankin said.

Courts across Canada "are struggling with these issues," she said.

Neither her own overdose or her boyfriend's death was enough to turn Falconer away from the drug world, Rankin said.

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"Yes, addiction is a powerful motivation, but so, apparently, is the lifestyle she wanted to have, the things she got accustomed to while living with her high-level kilo cocaine-dealer boyfriend," Rankin said. "She lost those things and wasn't prepared to do what everybody else does," such as get a job, go to school, or go on social assistance, Rankin said.

Roller said the urgency of the opioid crisis requires the courts to handle offenders with "determination, hostility and severity." 

"I can't whisper to you about how dangerous this is," Roller said. "I have to yell, I have to bang my shoe on the dais. I have to make sure you and the community knows that involvement in this lifestyle of peddling poison like this to our community, you have to expect the most severe consequences we have."

10-year sentence

Earlier this month, another Winnipeg woman, Dannielle Betteridge, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after pleading guilty to possession of carfentanil and fentanyl for the purposes of trafficking.

Betteridge was arrested in October 2016 after police followed her to a Broadway address and found her in possession of 300 blotter tabs of carfentanil (a drug 100 times more powerful than fentanyl) and two grams of fentanyl powder. Police executed a search warrant at Betteridge's home and found another 120 blotter tabs of carfentanil and 56 grams of fentanyl powder.

The 10-year sentence was jointly recommended by the Crown and defence. Court heard Betteridge, 37, had no prior criminal record and sold drugs to support her own addiction.

"The amount of substance seized here is incredibly, incredibly serious," said Crown attorney Jeremy Akerstream. "This [sentence] is at the low end of the range for someone who has the amount of drugs we are seeing here."

Betteridge said she wants to get clean. 

"I understand how serious the situation is and what I did wrong," she told Judge Tim Killeen. "Things snowballed out of control."

Last month, Misty Muswagon was sentenced to four years in prison after police caught her selling 18 fentanyl tablets in an outdoor "hand-to-hand transaction." 

Muswagon, 39, pleaded guilty to possession of a Schedule 1 drug for the purpose of trafficking, not specifically fentanyl, after telling police she believed she was selling Percocets. 

"In these particular circumstances, it could be even more dangerous to think you are selling Percocets when you are selling something far more serious like fentanyl," said Judge Robert Heinrichs. "The end result is deadly, not figuratively, but literally."