Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday issued new guidance to federal prosecutors on how to apply the death penalty to numerous drug-related crimes.

Sessions advised federal prosecutors to utilize laws permitting capital punishment as a viable sentence, both in violent and non-violent cases.

In the memo sent to U.S. attorneys Wednesday morning, Sessions said that some of the "appropriate cases" to seek the death penalty include murder related to racketeering crimes, gun deaths occurring during drug trafficking crimes and murder related to criminal enterprise.

The memo also encouraged prosecutors to pursue capital punishment in cases involving "dealing in extremely large quantities of drugs."

According to the U.S. statutes, an "extremely large" quantity of drugs means distributing at least 600 times the amount of a given substance that would bring penalties of five to 40 years in prison.

The Trump administration has frequently addressed the ongoing American opioid crisis, which has claimed more than 64,000 lives in 2016 alone, according to Sessions.