Attorney General Jeff Sessions has directed federal prosecutors to pursue the death penalty in cases involving drug traffickers he announced today. In a memo written to U.S. Attorneys, Sessions said the drug epidemic and specifically the opioid epidemic, has inflicted “unprecedented suffering” on American communities and that newer, and tougher strategies were necessary.
“Drug overdoses… killed more than 64,000 Americans in 2016 and now rank as the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. In the face of all of this death, we cannot continue with business as usual,” he wrote.
Sessions directed prosecutors to use available tools in fighting illegal drug trafficking as well as drug use in their districts, including appointing opioid coordinators, using data-analysis tools found in the Opioid Fraud and Abuse Detection Unit, and all criminal and civil remedies under federal law which includes “the pursuit of capital punishment in appropriate cases,” he said.
Sessions listed relevant U.S. statutes that allow for capital punishment in cases related to the use of a firearm in drug trafficking, racketeering and dealing in significantly large quantities of drugs. He also singled out opioid manufacturers and distributors, saying they need to be held accountable for unlawful practices.
“I strongly encourage federal prosecutors to use these statutes, when appropriate, to aid in our continuing fight against drug trafficking and the destruction it causes in our nation,” he said.
President Trump unveiled a framework for combating the nation’s opioid crisis this week. It included a list of initiatives that tackle treatment, prevention and punishment.
The President’s plan calls for an expansion of first responders’ access to naloxone, an emergency medication used to rapidly reverse the effects of opioid overdoses, and also calls on states to closely monitor the number of issued opioid prescriptions through a database that can alert authorities to patients seeking an unusual amount of medication.
In 2012, 259 million prescriptions were written for opioids, which amounts to more than one bottle of pills for every American adult, according to the American Society of Addiction Medicine.
President Trump’s plan calls for making it easier to sentence drug dealers who knowingly sell lethal illegal opioids to mandatory minimum sentences and also empowers a new Justice Department task force to prosecute doctors, pharmacies and other providers that over-prescribe or over-produce opioid-based medication.
It also recommends the death penalty for some individuals who distribute opioids.
The Trump administration hopes the plan will reduce opioid prescriptions by one-third within three years. “Stopping opioid abuse” was one of the President’s main campaign promises.
Critics are wary of the punishment initiatives in the plan, circumspect of reviving a failed war on drugs. “We are still paying the costs for one failed ‘war on drugs,’ and now President Trump is drawing up battle plans for another,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) said. “We will not incarcerate or execute our way out of the opioid epidemic.”
President Trump however, touted tougher punishment in attacking the opioid crisis as recently as March 1, when he hosted an opioid summit at the White House. “If you shoot one person, they give you life, they give you the death penalty,” he said. “These people can kill 2,000, 3,000 people and nothing happens to them.”