" A so-called Len Bias case is based in federal law. Under that law, a person who supplies drugs that cause a fatal overdose may be charged with a conspiracy that results in death—a charge that carries a twenty-year prison sentence. Cops have to prove the person died from the suspect’s drugs; a chain of custody has to be established. But if they can do that, they have a powerful prosecutorial tool and one that was getting a closer look in many parts of the country as the opiate epidemic and fatal drug overdoses spread across the nation. One place that refined the strategy was Portland, Oregon. The benefit prosecutors see in Len Bias is that it allows investigators to work up a chain of drug distribution. To save himself from a Len Bias prosecution, a dealer needs to flip, and quickly, burning the dealer one link above him in the chain, hoping for leniency at sentencing time. The last man detectives can trace the drugs to faces the twenty years if convicted—a fateful game of musical chairs. "

― Sam Quinones , Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic