All across America, young people are ensnared in drug investigations, and placed in danger as confidential informants to escape decades-long drug sentences for nothing more small buys.
It’s not always a case of mere risk – sometimes they’re killed over these state-coerced deals:
Last week North Dakota’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) released a report that finds no wrongdoing in the way an anti-drug task force handled a young confidential informant who turned up dead last June. Andrew Sadek, a 20-year-old student at North Dakota State College of Science in Wahpeton, agreed to work as an informant for the Southeast Multi-County Agency Drug Task Force (SEMCA) after he was arrested for selling pot on campus in 2013. His death calls to mind similar cases in which young drug offenders facing draconian penalties were forced into dangerous undercover work, including Rachel Hoffman, a Florida college student who was murdered in 2008 after agreeing to arrange the purchase of MDMA, cocaine, and a gun for $10,000.
Sadek himself was entrapped by a C.I. who bought marijuana from him on two occasions. Although the total value of the sales was just $80, Sadek faced up to 20 years in prison because the sales occurred in a "school zone." He agreed to do to others what had been done to him, buying marijuana at SEMCA’s direction from two dealers at his school on three occasions from November 2013 to January 2014. Each time Sadek bought an eighth of an ounce for $60. According to the BCI report, he had to buy from two more dealers "to fulfill his obligation in resolving the charges he had been facing." But at that point Sadek stopped communicating with his handler at SEMCA, which therefore charged him with two felonies and a misdemeanor on May 9.
That was a week after Sadek was reported missing. On June 27 his body was found in the Red River near Breckenridge, Minnesota, with a gunshot wound to the head.
Via Busted Over $80 Worth of Pot, College Student Turns Informant, Then Turns Up Dead @ Reason.com.