Last Updated on November 17, 2022
While announcing his presidential bid in 2024, former President, Donald J. Trump called for death sentences for drug dealers. Drug overdoses have skyrocketed over the past decade and accelerated over the past decade. A record-high 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, with fentanyl overdoses accounting for a large percentage of those deaths.
In announcing his presidential bid, Trump spoke in a subdued, professional tone and largely focused on policy. A number of conservative pundits have commented that Tuesday’s speech was Trump’s ‘most presidential sounding speech,’ which happen to be his formal announcement of his 2024 Presidential campaign.
Trump hit in many important issues during Tuesday’s presidential announcement, though he placed significant emphasis on drug overdoses and the border crisis which has exasperated the flow of deadly drugs into the United States.
The president argued that drug dealers who sell hard drugs like fentanyl will be responsible for dozens, potentially hundreds of deaths. Thus, Trump argued, the punishment for being caught dealing such drugs should carry the same penalty as a first-degree homicide charge.
“We are going to be asking that everyone who sells drugs/who gets caught selling drugs to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” announced former President Trump. “I don’t like to say it, and I’m not sure if the American public is ready for it.”
Death penalty for drug dealers #Trump2024 pic.twitter.com/INnyevZdWy
— National File (@NationalFile) November 17, 2022
Many of Trump’s advisories have suggested that the American public in fact is not ready for such a statement to be made, and that such comments were “not nice.” Regardless, Trump insisted on continuing, “they kill 500 people each on average.”
Trump recalled a discussion with President Xi Jinping of the People’s Republic of China Trump addresses the state of drug problems in China. President Xi insisted that drugs were not an issue in China because of something called a “quick trial.”
Xi explains to Trump that when a drug dealer is caught in China, they are seen in front of a courtroom immediately and subsequently executed on the same day, thus referred to as a “quick trial.”
Some supporters have argued that maybe Trump may have come off too stringent sentencing all drug dealers to death. Specifically, the question seems to be if the same harsh penalties should apply to marijuana dealers as they would to heroin dealers.