President Trump is seeking the death penalty, under certain circumstances, for drug traffickers. Do you want a deterrent? Well, thank President Donald Trump for one heck of a deterrent!
He’s also seeking a new mandatory minimum sentence for these known drug traffickers should the death penalty be taken off the table.
“You kill 5,000 people with drugs because you’re smuggling them in and you are making a lot of money and people are dying. And they don’t even put you in jail,” Trump said at the time. “That’s why we have a problem, folks. I don’t think we should play games.”
“The administration’s going to be rolling out policy over the next three weeks, and it’ll be very, very strong,” Mr. Trump said at the summit.
“Some countries have a very, very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty,” the president added at the time. “And by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do. So we’re going to have to be very strong on penalties. Hopefully, we can do some litigation against the opioid companies.”
“If somebody goes and shoots somebody, or kills somebody, they go away for life and they can even get the death penalty, right?” the president said. “… A drug dealer will kill 2,3, 5,000 people during the course of his or her life. Thousands of people are killed or their lives are destroyed, their families are destroyed. So you can kill thousands of people and go to jail for 30 days.”
“The president will call on Congress to pass legislation that reduces the threshold amount of drugs needed to invoke mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers who knowingly distribute certain illicit opioids, including fentanyl that are lethal in trace amounts,” Bremberg said Sunday on a call with reporters.
Trump in October declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency and said his administration would produce a “really tough, really big, really great advertising” campaign.
Yet another promise kept?! I actually support this move. How about you?
As reported by Fox News:
Trump made similar comments at a recent White House summit on opioids. “Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty. And, by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do,” Trump said. “So we’re going to have to be very strong on penalties.”
The Justice Department said the federal death penalty is available for several limited drug-related offenses, including violations of the “drug kingpin” provisions of federal law.
The White House plan amounts to a three-pronged attack on the opioid crisis: bolstering law enforcement against smuggling and trafficking, building up a campaign to educate Americans about the dangers of opioid abuse and over-prescription and improving funding for treatment through the federal government.
The plan’s objectives include reducing opioid prescriptions by one-third within three years and ensuring that all government healthcare providers adopt best practices for prescribing such drugs within five years. The White House has also called for increased research and development through public-private partnerships between the federal National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies.