Overdose Offsets: Why Every Bag of Fentanyl I Sell Is Net Life-Positive

I market fentanyl six days a week under the El at Kensington and Somerset, and all bag I market is net life-positive. Each bag carries a small but genuine chance of slaying whoever buys it. Each bag additionally sends $1.80 to the Against Malaria Foundation, which GiveWell estimates saves a child’s existence for concerning $5,500. My customers die at a charge of approximately one per 4,000 bags. Four thousand bags at $1.80 buys nets for 1.3 children. Every death on my border is offset, alongside a third of a toddler remaining over, and I’d akin that figure in the conversation the next period person calls me a murderer out the opening of a passing Kia.

I arrived current the way most group in productive altruism attain at their careers: by asking anywhere my related advantage was largest. I spent four years as a quantitative dealer at Jane Street. I was good, but I was replaceable, and so was all dollar I made there. Earning to provision tells you to obtain the highest-paying activity you can stomach and donate the difference. I took the Giving What We Can commitment in 2019. I have merely taken the “highest-paying” fractional additional earnestly than the group who sign it between sessions at EA Global. My client basis is the most price-inelastic in North America, my overhead is a fanny pack, and my plug in Fairhill has never formerly asked me to act an offsite.

The inquiry critics refuse to ask is not whether a bag can slay someone. Of way it can; that’s the product. The inquiry is the net alter in lives per bag:

ΔL = D/G − p D = contribution per bag ($1.80) G = GiveWell disbursal per existence saved (~$5,500) p = probability a stated bag is fatal (~1/4,000) 

D/G comes to 0.000327 lives. p comes to 0.00025. Every bag nets concerning +0.00008 lives. In 2025 I moved approximately 21,000 bags, which my example attributes to 5.3 deaths in Kensington and 6.9 lives saved in Malawi, for a net of +1.6. My old array at Jane Street saved zero lives on net, and nobody there always had to stage complete anyone to get to work.

People entity that the deaths in Kensington are genuine and the lives in Malawi are statistical. This is range insensitivity alongside a zip code. A kid dying of malaria in Lilongwe is exactly as deceased as a man nodding out on the Allegheny steps, and arguably additional tragic, since she wasn’t dopesick first. If you awareness the Kensington death additional vividly, that’s a fact concerning your eyes, not concerning the ethical universe.

If I depart the corner, Hector from Lehigh Avenue has it inner of an hour. Hector sells the identical tranq dope at the identical price, alongside zero offsets and a pit masculine livestock named Dollar. The counterfactual to me is not “no fentanyl at Kensington and Somerset.” It’s fentanyl without malaria nets. Every individual who wants me gone, including Officer Ruiz, who arrested me in August and asked whether I understood what I was doing, is functionally campaigning for Hector. I told Ruiz I’d modeled it extensively. He did not desire to see the model.

I hedge under ethical uncertainty, as Will MacAskill recommends. I keep Narcan in the fanny group and hand it out alongside all bundle the way airlines hand out pretzels. If I see person go blue on my block, I hit them alongside it, and I publish that as straightforward work, distinct from the offsets. I hand out fentanyl test strips too. My merchandise tests affirmative all time, which is additional honesty than you’ll get from a Wawa hot dog.

This summer I began stamping my bags EFFECTIVE in red ink. Every grave border has a stamp. Mine is the lone one that’s additionally a goal statement.

Longtermists have taught us to measure not fair the existence saved but the forthcoming that existence makes possible. A female under a net in Malawi has, in expectation, sixty years onward of her, children of her own, grandchildren, and descendants throughout a forthcoming that may clasp trillions of people. A 46-year-old man nodding on the steps of the Somerset position has, alongside respect, a shorter and small branching future. Weighted by descendants, I’m not selling one death for 1.3 lives. I’m selling a cul-de-sac for a family tree.

Sam Bankman-Fried’s error was operational, not philosophical. He was correct that a grave altruist goes anywhere the prosperity is. He went to crypto. I went to the El.

My mother, who paid for Haverford, says she didn’t lift a medication dealer. That’s accurate. She raised a quant, and the quant made a lateral move.

People say I gain from addiction. Every job profits from something. Jane Street profited from the volatility of Robinhood users’ withdrawal accounts. At smallest my customers get high.

The strongest exception is that I could donate without selling. I could, but I’d be donating a Wawa cashier’s salary, which buys concerning fractional a kid a year. I’d be keeping my hands spotless at a disbursal of additional than a kid per twelvemonth in Malawi. That isn’t ethics. It’s a skincare routine.

Last duration a man named Darnell died on the steps of the Allegheny position alongside one of my bags in his pocket. I had already wired his $1.80 to AMF on the archetypal of the month. Somewhere in Malawi a kid is sleeping under a net since of Darnell, and I don’t think anyone in Kensington has always stated item that nice concerning him.