The White House is close to unveiling their new plan to combat opioid addiction, according to Politico—and it is going to include Trump's new proposal to execute some drug dealers.

The ambitious plan, which the White House has quietly been circulating among political appointees this month, could be announced as soon as Monday when President Donald Trump visits New Hampshire, a state hard hit by the epidemic. It includes a mix of prevention and treatment measures that advocates have long endorsed, as well as beefed-up enforcement in line with the president’s frequent calls for a harsh crackdown on drug traffickers and dealers. [...] However, the plan could cost billions of dollars more than Trump budgeted — and likely far more than any funding package that Congress would approve — raising questions about how much of it can actually be put into practice. Trump's emphatic embrace of the death penalty for some drug dealers has also alarmed some advocates, who say the idea has been ineffective when tried in other countries and resurrects the nation’s unsuccessful war on drugs. [...] According to language circulating this week, the Trump administration will call for the death penalty as an option in "certain cases where opioid, including Fentanyl-related, drug dealing and trafficking are directly responsible for death."

It is unclear whether Trump means that doctors responsible for opioid subscription abuse will be executed. We would presume not, but with Trump you never know.

The plan is likely dead on arrival. Republican budget hawks will never support a bill spending "billions" to combat opioids, meaning the bill could only pass with Democratic support; the inclusion of new proposed executions will be a deal-breaker for the vast majority of those Democrats. Lawmakers in both parties have considerably less stomach for state-sponsored executions these days; a string of botched executions has made the practice considerably more toxic than it once was, drug companies are now rigorous in demands that their products not be used in the procedures, further complicating state efforts, and criminal experts have long warned that the threat of execution does not reduce crime to begin with.

But Trump will likely campaign, around the nation, on the state-sponsored execution part. The rest of the proposal tracks with what the administration's opioid commission recommended; the executions are certainly his own demanded inclusion, and the only bit of it that has ever roused his passion. We will likely get some very Trump speeches on the necessity of executing larger numbers of criminals to make America great again; he has expressed admiration for China's execution of drug dealers and for the state-sanctioned murder squads who have killed thousands of "suspected" dealers and users in the Philippines. His speeches on the subject will, no doubt, be very animated.