"Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty — and by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do," President Donald Trump said. | Win McNamee/Getty Images Trump suggests death penalty to stop opioid epidemic

President Donald Trump on Thursday suggested using the death penalty on drug dealers to address the opioid epidemic, equating providing lethal drugs with murder.

"We have pushers and drugs dealers, they are killing hundreds and hundreds of people," Trump said at a White House summit on opioid abuse. "If you shoot one person, they give you life, they give you the death penalty. These people can kill 2,000, 3,000 people and nothing happens to them."


Trump said countries that impose the death penalty on drug dealers have a better record than the United States in combating substance abuse.

"Some countries have a very, very tough penalty — the ultimate penalty — and by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do," he said.

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The remarks follow media reports earlier this week that Trump has privately praised countries like Singapore that mandate the death penalty for drug traffickers, arguing a softer approach to substance abuse won't be successful.

The remarks are likely to rankle administration critics who have urged the White House to focus on the public health component of the opioid crisis. The president's remarks did not touch on health approaches like providing additional funding for treatment.

“It makes us all very nervous” that the U.S. could move back to a “penal-first approach,” said Andrew Kessler, who leads Slingshot Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in behavioral health policy that advocates for substance abuse treatment and prevention. “I have no love for high-level traffickers or cartels, but a very high percentage of people who sell drugs do it to support their own habit.”

He and others said the government would be better offer treating people for addiction than imprisoning them.

“We have done the experiment with extreme mass incarceration to shrink the drug market and it failed,” said Mark Kleiman, who leads the crime and justice program at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management. “Between 1980 and today, the number of drug dealers behind bars has gone up by a factor of 30 and the prices of heroin and cocaine have fallen more than 90 percent. So the problem with putting drug dealers in prison is there is another drug dealer in there to take his place.”

It’s also unclear whether harsh sentences for drug dealers lower the level of drug use in a country. While Singapore “has done a pretty good job of reducing drug consumption,” countries like the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia still have "‘huge" drug problems, Kleiman said.

Former Democratic Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a member of the president's White House Commission on Opioids, who was not invited to the summit, said Trump should use the bully pulpit to promote an "orchestrated solution across many departments of government."

“There is a certain easiness about talking tough when in fact we have been talking tough for years and it hasn’t gotten us anywhere,” Kennedy said.

Former Republican Rep. Mary Bono, co-founder of the Collaborative for Effective Prescription Opioid Policies, said Trump should have specified who he was referring to when suggesting harsh penalties for drug dealers.

“If he is really talking about the worst of the worst, he needs to be clear," she said. “It gets into a gray area, and it can be a little uncomfortable when you go there.”

Trump’s remarks also deviate from the tone taken by his own Surgeon General Jerome Adams earlier Thursday. At a U.S. Chamber of Commerce event on the opioid crisis, Adams talked about his brother, who is in state prison due to crimes he committed to support his addiction. He emphasized the need for the country to move toward earlier intervention and strengthening its mental health services so that drug-related crimes and prison can be avoided.

“At the end of the day, if you commit a crime, there are folks out there who are dedicated to and need to address the public safety aspect of it, but the question I ask myself is how many opportunities did we miss earlier on to have had that warm handoff, to have connected him to care so that he didn’t continue to go down his addiction pathway, his criminal pathway. That would have saved us money and save trouble for the people who he honestly did victimize," Adams said.

Trump also said his administration will unveil new policies to address the crisis over the next few weeks but did not provide any details, simply stating they would be "very, very strong."

He expressed support for going after pharmaceutical companies and distributors that supply prescription painkillers for their role in the crisis.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions said this week that the Justice Department will file a statement of interest in litigation that includes hundreds of lawsuits by states and localities against opioid manufacturers and distributors.

The Justice Department will argue that the federal government has borne substantial costs due to the opioid epidemic and should be reimbursed for health programs and law enforcement efforts to combat the crisis.

Cities, counties and states are seeking to recover the costs associated with providing treatment and public safety, by targeting companies that they allege used false, deceptive or unfair marketing practices for prescription opioids.

Sessions also said the federal government is studying the possibility of initiating its own opioid litigation.

The federal government previously went after many opioid-makers in court a decade ago, with companies like Purdue Pharma pleading guilty to misleading regulators, doctors and patients about the drugs' risks of addiction and abuse.

Trump’s remarks came at the end of a summit that highlighted different approaches to addressing drug abuse.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar talked about increasing access to treatment programs and focusing on researching non-opioid pain therapies. HUD Secretary Ben Carson discussed how communities can provide support and housing for people suffering from addiction.

Some public health experts advocated for a greater focus on prevention efforts.

“My concern is we’re focused on treatment and arresting and not focused on prevention,” said Mike Fraser, the executive director for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.

Advocates and drug policy experts said they are eager to see a follow-through.

Regina LaBelle, who served as chief of staff at the Office of National Drug Control Policy during the Obama administration, said she thought the White House’s efforts were headed in the right direction. “I thought they did a great job,” she said. “Now we have to make sure that we follow it up with action.”