East End Pols Urge Passage of Death by Dealer Bill Dubbed Chelsey's Law

Local lawmakers rallied on Jan. 8 at the New York State Capitol in Albany to call on the state Legislature to pass the proposed Chelsey’s Law named after a Long Island woman who fatally overdosed.

State Sen. Anthony Palumbo (R-New Suffolk) and state Assemblymember Jodi Giglio (R-Riverhead) joined officials, advocates and family members urging passage of the legislation previously known as the “Death by Dealer” bill at the start of the new legislative session.

“The fentanyl epidemic has devastated families, stolen the promise and future of so many young New Yorkers and left communities struggling with how to combat this scourge,” Palumbo said. “Chelsey’s Law will increase penalties for individuals who knew or had reasonable grounds to know that the narcotics they sold were laced with fentanyl … These individuals are not drug dealers, they are death dealers, and the punishment should match the severity of their crimes.”

In addition to enabling prosecutors to charge defendants with manslaughter for causing fatal overdoses by selling fentanyl-laced illegal narcotics, the legislative package would also criminalize illegal use of xylazine, commonly known as tranq;
allow overdose victims’ families to access the crime victims fund; and allow prosecutors to ask for bail for dealers of fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Under current law, a dealer who sells drugs that cause a fatal overdose can only be charged with criminal sale of a controlled substance.

Suffolk County reported more than 400 deaths caused by drug overdoses, with fentanyl being the driving force and common denominator, in 2022 amid a national opioid crisis that has become the deadliest drug epidemic in U.S. history, claiming more than 70,000 lives since 2019, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“This is a crisis,” said Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney, who was among the local lawmakers who traveled to the state capitol to rally for the bill. “ While legislation will never be the sole solution, these common sense changes will save lives. It is our moral and ethical duty, at the very least, to ask each of our elected officials to consider these bills.”

Chelsey’s parents, Gene and Sue Murray, recalled how a dealer targeted her as she left a drug rehabilitation center — and how she was the couple’s second child to be claimed by the disease of addiction in a decade.

“After her tragic overdose from fentanyl and the arrest of the drug dealer, we were shocked to learn that in New York State, Chelsey’s fentanyl dealer who caused her death could not be charged with anything beyond the sale of the drugs that killed her,” they said. “We need a stronger law to hold those, who sell the poison that kills so many like our daughter Chelsey, accountable.”