Causing death by the unlawful supply of drugs: A remodelling of criminal causation using tortious precepts

The common law offence of gross negligence manslaughter in criminal law is predicated on precepts of duty and causality that also have a scalar resonance within tortious liability and relational conceptualisations of neighbourhood, foreseeability and remoteness of harm(s). It is the authors’ contention that it is adventitious to examine these standardisations across the criminal–civil law landscape to iterate original and distinctiveness pathways for constitutive criminalisation (or otherwise) and to act as a lodestar for de novo reform. This comparative review will have a supererogatory focus on drug administration and ascriptive responsibility but will also extend to medical mis- (and non)-feasance, with attention also on novus actus interveniens principles where actions by a victim or claimant may legitimately intercede. The review will be grounded in apposite public policy concerns that ought to be primordial across a panoply of disparate engagements.