Maine Gov. Paul LePage suggested this week that his state’s gun-owners “load up and get rid of the drug dealers.” Smiling broadly, he told a reporter who asked if he was courting vigilantism, "I'm smarter than that," but some Mainers are concerned unstable people may act on the idea.

The headline-grabbing Republican has made a series of controversial comments about drug-dealing this month, arguing earnestly for executing drug dealers who sell lethal products and with less seriousness for using guillotines to do it.

He kicked off the month denouncing drug dealers “with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty” who “half the time.. impregnate a young white girl before they leave,” for which he later apologized.

He made the latest splash in an interview with WGME-TV, saying, "Everybody in Maine, we have 'constitutional carry': load up and get rid of the drug dealers because folks, they are killing our kids," before the apparent backtrack.

Some of Maine's most prominent criminal defense attorneys expressed concern about such remarks, saying they are startling and unlikely to in any way undermine drug-dealing.

“I was shocked and disturbed to read about it, from our governor no less,” says longtime Augusta-based defense attorney Walter McKee, who has represented many people accused of drug crimes.

McKee says clients haven’t contacted him with concern since LePage made the remark Wednesday, but that he's concerned it may “embolden unstable people to commit violent, unjustified crimes.”

Maine does not require a concealed carry permit, meaning armed residents could "load up" and legally patrol the streets of Portland and Bangor looking for suspected dealers.

Attorney Lenny Sharon, who has defended people accused of drug crimes for three decades in southern Maine, says “no threats of the use of a guillotine [or] street assassinations will stem the flow of drugs.”

“Much of the hysteria about punishing those responsible for the influx of heroin are cleverly or sometimes not so cleverly racially coded,” he says. Heightened awareness of imported heroin in Maine “creates the perfect storm of hysteria in what is an all-white state,” he says.

“Do you know that there are no criminal defense lawyers of color in this state? Do you know that there is one judge of color in this state? Do you know that the chances of getting a person of color on a jury is almost impossible? Do you know that there are no prosecutors of color?”

Sharon, who serves on the state’s pardon board, says talk of vigilantism “is appealing to the fantasies of those who would like to ride into town with fifteen of their forty automatic weapons blazing,” and that he views it as unfortunate at a time when lawmakers across the country consider rolling back harsh anti-drug penalties that he says have caused “life crippling sentences” for his clients.

LePage would face no criminal charges and have no civil liability if someone shoots a suspected drug dealer, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh says. "If the governor’s advice isn’t hyperbole, it surely is bad advice," Volokh adds. "While you can use deadly force to prevent an imminent violent crime, you can’t use deadly force just because you think someone is dealing drugs."

Though LePage has been campaigning for a tough-on-crime approach to an apparent increase in heroin use, reflected in a rise in overdose deaths, many policy advocates are pushing reform in the opposite direction to combat the problem.

Maine state Sen. David Woodsome, a fellow Republican, is sponsoring legislation that would increase funding for methadone clinics that treat long-time heroin addicts.

“It’s not so dramatic and exciting,” he says, but may have better results.



“I think [LePage] likes to fight and confront people and to shake them up and unsettle them, you know," Woodsome says, adding the governor is more circumspect in-person and that he hopes gun-owners won't feel encouragement to address drug-dealing on his or her own.

Woodsome says he’s undecided on deeper drug reform proposals, such as legalization of marijuana for recreational use, which Maine voters are likely to consider in November, with supporters preparing to turn in the required petition signatures for ballot access Monday.

"If Gov. LePage wants to hurt illegal drug dealers, he should support ending marijuana prohibition," says David Boyer, chairman of Maine's Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol. "Regulating marijuana would take sales out of the underground market and replace illegal marijuana dealers with licensed businesses."

Maine already allows for medical marijuana and has eight dispensaries and more collaborative caregiver facilities. Cannabis community attorney Lynne Williams says she's not interested in addressing LePage's latest remarks, likening doing so to wasting time on a social media slug-fest.