{"id":60938,"date":"2018-03-20T07:20:21","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T07:20:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=60938"},"modified":"2018-03-20T07:20:21","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T07:20:21","slug":"trump-calls-for-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers-but-says-country-might-not-be-ready","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/trump-calls-for-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers-but-says-country-might-not-be-ready.html","title":{"rendered":"Trump calls for death penalty for drug dealers but says country might not be ready"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 style=\"text-align: justify\"><strong><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 18pt;color: #000000\">Trump calls for death penalty for drug dealers but says country might not be ready<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">President Donald Trump doubled down on his call for the death penalty for drug dealers in a speech in New Hampshire Monday, making the case that such a zero-tolerance policy would fix the nation\u2019s drug problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cWe have to change the laws, and we&#8217;re working on that right now. The Department of Justice is working very, very hard on that. But the ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;Maybe our country&#8217;s not ready for that. It&#8217;s possible, it&#8217;s possible that our country is not ready for that,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cAlthough personally, I can&#8217;t understand that,\u201d he continued.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cYou take a look at some of these countries where they don\u2019t play games,\u201d he said, not mentioning any by name. \u201cThey don\u2019t have a drug problem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">&#8220;We can have all the blue ribbon committees we want,&#8221; Trump said, &#8220;but if we don&#8217;t get tough on drug dealers, we are wasting our time.&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">As he talked about punishing drug dealers, a woman yelled out from the audience: \u201cWhat about compassion?\u201d Trump seemed to not hear it or ignore it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">A White House release on Trump&#8217;s initiative said the Justice Department would seek the death penalty, &#8220;where appropriate under current law,&#8221; against those convicted of dealing and trafficking in fentanyl and other opioids. Some experts have questioned whether the move would have much impact.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Four months after declaring the opioid crisis a public health emergency, Trump said he came back to New Hampshire because he&#8217;d promised during the campaign to help the state deal with its opioid drug problem, noting the state&#8217;s death rate from overdoses is double the national average.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Trump&#8217;s wife Melania introduced him saying she&#8217;d seen the effect of the &#8220;crisis&#8221; first-hand when visiting hospitals and treatment centers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">&#8220;I&#8217;m proud of this administration&#8217;s effort to end this epidemic,&#8221; she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Looking on in the audience were Attorney General Jeff Sessions and senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, who has taken the White House lead on the opioid issue.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">While Trump&#8217;s speech took place in 2018, it was in many ways a throwback to the 1980s when the \u201cJust Say No\u201d campaign was a leading effort to combat the nation\u2019s drug problem. The president said it\u2019s time again to scare kids away from drugs through a well-funded commercial campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cIt&#8217;s the least expensive thing we can do, where you scare them from ending up like the people in the commercials. And will make them very, very bad commercials. Will make them pretty unsavory situations,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">He also said he and first lady Melania Trump were introducing a new website, crisisnextdoor.gov, where people affected by the opioid crisis can share stories. Other new policy goals include cutting overall opioid prescriptions by one-third over the next three years and urging Congress to get rid of an old law prohibiting Medicaid from paying for care at some treatment facilities.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Trump also related the opioid crisis to immigration, saying he will work to end sanctuary city policies and accusing Democrats of stonewalling progress on DACA because they want to stop construction of the border wall. There was a short chant of \u201cBuild the wall!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">\u201cThey don&#8217;t want to go with DACA because they don&#8217;t care about DACA, but they&#8217;re trying to tie the wall to DACA and DACA to the wall,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Trump claimed 90 percent of illegal drugs come through the southern border. &#8220;Eventually the Democrats will agree with us to build the wall to keep the damn drugs out!&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><span style=\"font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;font-size: 14pt;color: #000000\">Trump said he would \u201cprobably\u201d hold a \u201cmajor news conference\u201d at the White House in about a month to discuss dealing with how prescription drugs contribute to the overall drug addiction problem but did not give any further details.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt;font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif\">Source:-http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/trump-calls-death-penalty-drug-dealers-country-ready\/story?id=53857260<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"fb-background-color\">\n\t\t\t  <div \n\t\t\t  \tclass = \"fb-comments\" \n\t\t\t  \tdata-href = \"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/trump-calls-for-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers-but-says-country-might-not-be-ready.html\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-numposts = \"10\"\n\t\t\t  \tdata-lazy = \"true\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-colorscheme = \"light\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-order-by = \"social\"\n\t\t\t\tdata-mobile=true>\n\t\t\t  <\/div><\/div>\n\t\t  <style>\n\t\t    .fb-background-color {\n\t\t\t\tbackground: #ffffff !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t\t.fb_iframe_widget_fluid_desktop iframe {\n\t\t\t    width: 630px !important;\n\t\t\t}\n\t\t  <\/style>\n\t\t  ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trump calls for death penalty for drug dealers but says country might not be ready President Donald Trump doubled down on his call for the death penalty for drug dealers in a speech in New Hampshire Monday, making the case that such a zero-tolerance policy would fix the nation\u2019s drug [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":60939,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[79821,9292,125329,124805,124817],"class_list":["post-60938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-latest-news-headlines","tag-latest-us-news","tag-trump-calls-for-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers-but-says-country-might-not-be-ready","tag-usa-breaking-news-and-latest-headlines","tag-usa-today-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}