President Trump has released a plan to combat the opioid epidemic that include a proposed death penalty for some drug dealers.
The president announced the Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse during his first visit as president to New Hampshire.
The plan also includes efforts like expanding access to the gold standard of treatment for an opioid addiction and ensuring first responders are equipped with an opioid overdose reversal drug.
Inevitably, it will be the death penalty proposal that will get the most attention.
Since the US death penalty was re-instated in 1976 only two convicts have faced a sentence of capital punishment for a non-murder offence.
Both inmates were child rapists, and their death sentences were later overturned after the US Supreme Court ruled the penalties were unconstitutional.
...any attempt to change the law to introduce the death penalty for drug trafficking would require an act of Congress.
It would probably fall afoul of previous Supreme Court rulings on proportional punishment.
How do you feel about the use of the death penalty for some drug dealers? Is this too extreme? If not the death penalty, what extreme measures should be used when dealing with drug dealers?
Here's my thoughts: I am a death penalty supporter, but only for the most heinous crimes. That is, I think if a jury believes that death is an appropriate punishment for a crime due to its circumstances, I favor giving the jury that option. In my mind, that means murder, rape, or torture.
Drug dealing is a crime that infuriates me, but I don't put it in the same category as murder, rape, or torture. So I don't favor the death penalty for drug dealers.