Yahoo News Donald Trump 'jokes about killing drug dealers’
Donald Trump reportedly wants to deal with drug trafficking in the United States by executing all dealers.
The President is said by several sources to have looked at countries in the Far East, where the death penalty is the punishment for dealing quantities of drugs, for his inspiration.
According to Axios, Trump said: ‘When I ask the prime minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem [the prime minister replies,] “No. Death penalty.”’
The Singapore model sees the death penalty applied to anyone caught with more than 15 grams of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine, 500 grams of cannabis, and 1,200 grams of opium.
Several sources told Axios that Trump often compares high-volume drug traffickers to serial killers in terms of the severity of their crimes, and argues that the punishment should be the same.
One senior administration official told the site: ‘He often jokes about killing drug dealers… He’ll say, “You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have a drug problem. They just kill them.”’
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Kellyanne Conway, who leads the White House’s anti-drug efforts, said that the President is talking about ‘high-volume dealers who are killing thousands of people’.
She said that several US states execute criminals for killing one person while dealers can cause mass casualties without an equally harsh punishment.
Despite Trump’s reported desire to bring in the death penalty for drug traffickers, it is unlikely the law would ever get passed.
Trump last year described Rodrigo Duterte, the President of the Philippines, who pledged to kill every drug dealer in the country, as a ‘good guy’.
