Beltway freaks out as Trump proposes death penalty for drug dealers

I have never been pro-death penalty and I'm not going to start now. But I've also always believed this: Whatever the most severe criminal penalty is, drug dealers should get it. They should be right up there with mass murderers, because they're essentially doing the same thing. They're sowing the seeds of destroyed lives, knowing full well that's what they're doing, simply because it makes them money. That is not very much in vogue to believe these days. People have either signed on to the moronic notion that illicit drugs are not all that harmful, or else they're clinging to the insane idea that the law should not concern itself with the distribution of these substances of death, disease, broken families and hopelessness. When you talk like a drug warrior these days you get mocked for sounding like Nancy Reagan. People snicker as they wear DARE shirts ironically. Morons dismiss the notion that "a little Mary Jane" should concern anyone.

And while we're engaged in all this foolishness, we are simultaneously struggling to find a solution for an epidemic of opioid addiction that is completely out of control. We've spent decades telling people that it's perfectly fine for them to get high if that's what they want to do, and now we can't begin to understand how all this happened. It happened because the drug warriors were right all along, and it simply became unfashionable to give them any credence or respect. That would explain why the Beltway crowd is so upset that Donald Trump has suggested a measure that would actually get results, and by definition result in fewer opioid dealers:

President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested using the death penalty on drug dealers to address the opioid epidemic, equating providing lethal drugs with murder. "We have pushers and drugs dealers, they are killing hundreds and hundreds of people," Trump said at a White House summit on opioid abuse. "If you shoot one person, they give you life, they give you the death penalty. These people can kill 2,000, 3,000 people and nothing happens to them." Trump said countries that impose the death penalty on drug dealers have a better record than the United States in combating substance abuse.

"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," he said. The remarks follow media reports earlier this week that Trump has privately praised countries like Singapore that mandate the death penalty for drug traffickers, arguing a softer approach to substance abuse won't be successful. The remarks are likely to rankle administration critics who have urged the White House to focus on the public health component of the opioid crisis. The president's remarks did not touch on health approaches like providing additional funding for treatment. “It makes us all very nervous” that the U.S. could move back to a “penal-first approach,” said Andrew Kessler, who leads Slingshot Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in behavioral health policy that advocates for substance abuse treatment and prevention. “I have no love for high-level traffickers or cartels, but a very high percentage of people who sell drugs do it to support their own habit.” He and others said the government would be better offer treating people for addiction than imprisoning them.

No we wouldn't. Give me Trump's approach any day. For one thing, why is it a defense of drug dealers that they're dealing to support their own habit? You're still ruining the lives of other people by dealing. The fact that you're also ruining your own does not make that any more acceptable. And I really don't know why politicians and media types are so infatuated with "treatment" as a solution to drug abuse. Treatment is hardly a silver bullet. Addicts go through multiple rounds of treatment and many never kick the habit because the truth is they really don't want to. They like getting high and they want to keep doing it. It's more important than their jobs, their families or even their own lives. And if people aren't in treatment, it's generally not because there isn't funding available. If you really want to go into rehab there are all kinds of ways to pay for it. People don't go into treatment because they don't want to. Drug abuse is criminal activity. Even if all you're doing is buying it and using it, you're still using your money to support a criminal enterprise that ruins millions of lives. You deserve to be in prison for that. At some point when you were sober, you made the decision to become a drug user and/or a drug pusher. I'm all for helping people who want to change their lives, but most drug users don't want that at all. They just want to keep doing it and not get caught, even though they're part of something that's killing people and ripping families apart. So yes. Whatever the most severe penalty is for criminal activity, drug dealers should get it. It's good to once again have a president who intends no tolerance on the subject of drugs. Maybe the rest of the country will figure out at some point what morons they've become since Nancy Reagan regrettably left the stage.

Dan Calabrese——Bio and Archives

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