Donald Trump looks at a nation with a serious opioid addiction problem that’s taking tens of thousands of lives a year, and he doesn’t think “how can we heal people?” Based on his speech unveiling his anti-opioid plan in New Hampshire Monday afternoon, he doesn’t think about public health or what experts would recommend to address the problem, either. Instead, he thinks “kill kill kill.” And he thinks that makes him tough.
"If we don't get tough on the drug dealers we're wasting our time. That toughness includes the death penalty," he said of a more controversial measure to targeting drug traffickers
He added, "If we're not going to get tough on the drug dealers, we are just doing the wrong thing, we have got to get tough."
He thinks about ways to appeal to racism:
And he thinks about a pretty thoroughly discredited prevention tool:
He also said the administration would be looking to create "bad commercials to "scare" kids from using drugs.
"Kids can see these commercials they can say 'I don't want any part of it', that's the least expensive thing we can do," he said.
Decades of anti-drug public service announcements have led to the conclusion that they don't work, but hey, Trump may not have needed a lot of drugs to make his brain resemble a frying egg.