Last month, federal prosecutors indicted five people for the overdose death of a celebrity the previous year. Three have pleaded guilty so far, and this month, a trial date was set for the other two. Many of the details certainly reveal heinous behavior, but the case makes clear that prohibition itself bears the most responsibility.
On October 28, 2023, Matthew Perry—the actor best known as Chandler Bing on the long-running sitcom Friends—died at his Los Angeles home. The county medical examiner announced in December that Perry's death primarily resulted from "the acute effects of ketamine"; the full autopsy indicated that he drowned in his hot tub when a sizable dose of the drug depressed his breathing and caused him to slip into unconsciousness.
Ketamine was developed for use in anesthesia and pain relief before gaining a reputation as a club drug in the 1980s. Recent evidence suggests it can be used to treat persistent depression and addiction. In the right context, it's also quite safe: A 2022 scientific review of 312 overdoses and 138 deaths in which ketamine was present found "no cases of overdose or death related to the use of ketamine as an antidepressant in a therapeutic setting."
Perry struggled with drug and alcohol addictions for most of his adult life, but the summer before his death, he said he had been sober for 18 months. As investigators would discover, Perry was staying clean through therapeutic ketamine treatments but eventually became addicted to the treatment itself; when doctors refused to increase his dosage, he sought the drug elsewhere.
Among those indicted are physicians Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, as well as Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry's personal assistant. Iwamasa admitted in a plea agreement that "beginning in or around September 2023," Perry asked for help "procuring illegal drugs for [his] personal use." Iwamasa worked with Plasencia, who supplied ketamine from his own practice, as well as purchasing some from Chavez, who operated a ketamine clinic. Both men falsified prescriptions and medical records to justify ordering ketamine that could be sold to Perry on the side.
At times, Plasencia came to Perry's house to administer the drug himself, but he also showed Iwamasa how to administer it "through an intramuscular injection" and left behind syringes for future use. At the same time, Iwamasa worked with Erik Fleming, a drug dealer who is also charged, to get even more ketamine for Perry to take.
The indictments include truly odious details of people taking advantage of Perry's desperation for profit. "I wonder how much this moron will pay," Plasencia allegedly texted Chavez. "Lets find out."
By the final week of Perry's life, he was receiving multiple injections per day. According to his plea, Iwamasa had found Perry "unconscious at his residence on at least two occasions" in October. On the day Perry died, despite having received two injections already, he told Iwamasa to prepare the hot tub and "shoot me up with a big one." Iwamasa later returned from running errands to find Perry dead.
Iwamasa and Chavez have pleaded guilty, as has Fleming. This month, a March 2025 trial date was set for Plasencia and Jasveen Sangha, Fleming's supplier who is colorfully referred to in the indictments as "the Ketamine Queen." Each defendant potentially faces a decade or more in prison.
Perry's death, again, is tragic—all the more so due to the circumstances behind it, as people took advantage of his desperation for their own gain. But many of the charges are hard to square with reality.
For one thing, Perry did not overdose, and his drugs were not tainted; while the medical examiner listed ketamine as the primary contributing factor in his death, the most direct cause was drowning. "Matthew Perry drowned while intoxicated on ketamine the same way people routinely drown while intoxicated on alcohol," Ryan Marino, a doctor of toxicology and addiction medicine at University Hospitals in Cleveland, told Filter.
Andrew Stolbach, a physician and toxicologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, "said it's unlikely Perry would have died if he was not in a body of water," VICE reported last year. "It's really dangerous to use sedative drugs in a pool, especially alone, or a bathtub," Stolbach added.
There is also no use of force alleged in any of the indictments. After all, Iwamasa did not inject Perry with ketamine against his boss' will—rather, he was following Perry's direction every step of the way. At times, the indictments even depict desperation: On October 7, Iwamasa texted Plasencia about buying ketamine the next morning, before texting later that day, "I just ran out," and indicating he needed it sooner.
Earlier this month, Deanna Kizis wrote in Vanity Fair that Iwamasa may not have felt he had a choice, as "the assistant community knows all about how hard it is to say no to a Hollywood boss."
None of the doctors or drug dealers are alleged to have used force, either: Perry came to them willingly, seeking drugs to nurse his addictions. And there is no allegation that any of them intentionally inflicted harm on him—after all, why would any drug dealer seek to harm a reliable client? If anything, the indictments show a commitment to keeping Perry around: Plasencia texted Chavez to make sure he had access to a consistent supply of ketamine, saying they "would be best served not having him look elsewhere" and should "[b]e his go to."
It's also worth noting that California has no law by which state prosecutors can charge a street dealer for selling drugs that someone dies after taking, so long as the drugs weren't intentionally tainted without the user's knowledge. But federal law is another story: If dealers sell a "controlled substance," and "if death or serious bodily injury results from the use of such substance," then federal prosecutors can bring charges punishable by "not less than 20 years or more than life" in federal prison.
It's not clear that increasing penalties for people who supply people with the means of their ultimate undoing has the intended effect: In the Philippines, where the punishment for drug trafficking is death, traffickers merely trick or coerce others into muling the drugs on their behalf. British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford has spent a decade on death row after she was caught smuggling cocaine into Indonesia.
This is not the first time in recent years that federal prosecutors have thrown the book at drug dealers after a celebrity's death. In 2018, rapper Mac Miller died of a drug overdose. In the years since, two dealers have received prison sentences of more than a decade each.
And actor Michael K. Williams died of an overdose in September 2021 after using heroin that had been laced with fentanyl. Last year, the dealer who sold him the drugs was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Instead of throwing the book at the people who sold Perry ketamine, federal prosecutors and legislators should take a good look at the system that pushed him toward more unscrupulous sources for what he was seeking.
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