Scott Earle got addicted to painkillers after a high school sports injury. As an adult, he was still an addict but managed to hold a full-time job at an auto dealership in Florida.
Earle went to his local emergency room in 1995 for a painful diverticulitis attack and was given Vicodin. Days later, Earle met a beautiful woman at a bar who turned out to be a police informant.
She asked him to give her Vicodin for her back pain, and he eventually hooked her up with a friend of his who gave her 100 pills at a time.
The state of Florida initially passed mandatory minimums to target violent drug trafficking operations, FAMM's Florida director Gregory Newburn told Business Insider. This law has an unfair impact on people who sell painkillers, which come in pill form and weigh more than drugs like cocaine.
"What happens is it's almost universally the law of unintended consequences," Newburn says.
The judge in Earle's case, Mark Speiser, seemed to agree his sentence was unfair. "I have to express my deep concern about this particular situation," Speiser said at sentencing, according to FAMM. "This punishment does not fit the crime."