Today Attorney General Jeff Sessions released the following statement on President Trump’s plan to end the devastating opioid epidemic:



“Drug dealers show no respect for human dignity and put their own greed ahead of the safety and even the lives of others. Drug trafficking is an inherently violent and deadly business: if you want to collect a drug debt, you collect it with the barrel of a gun. As surely as night follows day, violence and death follow drug trafficking, and murder is often a tool of drug traffickers.



“At the Department of Justice, we have made ending the drug epidemic a priority. We will continue to aggressively prosecute drug traffickers and we will use federal law to seek the death penalty wherever appropriate.



“I want to thank the President for his strong leadership on this issue and I join him in sending the message that business as usual has ended.”