Former President Donald Trump spoke to New Hampshire voters during a CNN town hall held at St. Anselm College in Manchester Wednesday night. Audience members asked how he would tackle issues like abortion, Second Amendment rights, immigration and more. But nobody brought up the opioid crisis plaguing the Granite State.

Two of New Hampshire’s major cities, Manchester and Nashua, saw a spike in opioid-related deaths at the end of 2022, WMUR reported in January, a 41% and 37% increase respectively. Like other states that have historically struggled with the health crisis attributed to drug makers and distributors, New Hampshire is slated to receive tens of millions of dollars in settlement payouts–an estimated $310 million–in the next 20 years.
However, Trump does have a plan for addressing America’s drug problems, even if he didn’t discuss it Wednesday night: institute the death penalty for drug traffickers, smugglers and dealers. It’s an approach in stark contrast with much of the world — it’s also a violation of international human rights laws.

This extreme position on drug offenses came right out of the gate with Trump’s candidacy. During his campaign announcement last November, the former president drummed a familiar beat on securing America’s southern border and combating Mexican drug cartels. He didn’t go into detail on his promises, but did outline how he would handle certain drug offenses.

“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said. “Because it’s the only way.”

But November wasn’t the first time Trump suggested harsh penalties for drug offenders. It was another event in Manchester when he delivered a similar message as president. Speaking to a crowd at Manchester Community College on March 19, 2018, Trump espoused a strong response to drug crimes:

“… if we don’t get tough on drug dealers, we’re wasting our time, just remember that, we’re wasting our time, and that toughness includes the death penalty,” Trump lambasted.

Using the opioid epidemic as a backdrop at the time, Trump compared penalties for drug dealers and murderers. He claimed some drug dealers will kill thousands of people in their lifetime and that, if caught, they face light sentences: 30 days in jail, “they’ll go away for a year,” he told his supporters, “or they’ll be fined.”

“And yet if you kill one person, you get the death penalty or you go to jail for life.”

Details about Trump’s policy aren’t clear

Details about Trump’s proposed agenda are limited, but the former president outlined some of his plans in a ad on his campaign’s official Twitter account.
Donald J. Trump for President 2024, Inc.
The former president has a history of making brazen policy promises that he did not deliver: having Mexico pay for a wall along the southern border, implementing a nation-wide concealed carry weapon permit and ending birthright citizenship to name a few.

NPR reached out to the Trump team with questions about the specifics of how he would combat Mexico’s cartels specifically and drug crimes more broadly. The inquiry went unanswered. Still, there is publicly available information to determine the approach Trump intends to take, most notably in a 2024 campaign agenda.

He promises to “impose a total naval embargo on cartels” and demand the Department of Defense “inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership and operations”. Trump said he’ll have cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations and will “choke off their access to the global financial system”.

Furthermore, he pledged to work with neighboring governments to dismantle the cartels, backed by the threat of exposing “every bribe and kickback that allows these criminal networks to preserve their brutal reign”.

The agenda concludes with Trump asking Congress to pass legislation to ensure drug smugglers and traffickers are eligible for the death penalty.

“When President Trump is back in the White House, the drug kingpins and vicious traffickers will never sleep soundly again,” the pledge reads.

Is Trump’s approach reasonable? Possible?
According to University of Notre Dame Law Professor Jimmy Gurulé, who also serves as the director of the university’s Exoneration Justice Clinic, Trump’s pledge to enact capital punishment for drug offenses isn’t realistic.

In order for Trump’s agenda to be implemented nationwide, he would have to convince the majority of lawmakers in Congress as well as those in state legislatures.

America’s drug laws fall under Title 21 of the U.S. Code, where subsections 841 and 960, in essence, prohibit the manufacturing and distribution of controlled substances.

But drug charges can be tricky.

Gurulé explained that drug-related offenses violate federal and state laws. However, “the vast majority of drug trafficking offenses are prosecuted at the state level as a state criminal offense,” he explained.

As a result, federal offenses make up only a “small fraction” of all drug smuggling prosecutions. Which is why if Trump somehow convinced a divided Congress to pass a death penalty bill–a long shot on its own–it would only apply on the federal level, thus not having much of an impact on sentencing for individual states.

“I think it may be intended to generate press headlines, but in terms of it being a serious recommendation, a serious proposal to a serious problem … it’s not a serious recommendation,” Gurulé said.

In short, the former president’s approach to tackling America’s drug problem through the death penalty is bombastic; a promise he cannot keep.

States utilizing the death penalty are on the decline