Is the Death Penalty For Dealers a Deterrent, or A Smoke Screen?
President Trump is suggesting stiffer penalties for certain individuals who are convicted of dealing drugs. This could include the death penalty. According to Trump, “If we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we are wasting our time.” Trump went on to say that dealers “will kill thousands of people during their lifetime” but won’t be punished for the carnage they cause. And further that this punishment would be only used against the “big pushers, the ones who are really killing people.”
Yet, I can’t help but think isn’t this just another way of pushing more people into prison? I mean, we as a nation already have more prisoners than any other country on earth. And, that’s not per capita, that’s by total numbers of prisons not including those who are incarcerated in city and county “jails”—which are increasingly being used for longer sentences for misdemeanors like marijuana possession, which until last year could get you 10 years in jail in the great state of Oklahoma.
At this point, I think we really need to understand one basic FACT—The biggest drug pushers in most communities are corporate name brands like CVS, Walgreens, and Rite-Aid. For more information about how drug companies aren’t making recovery easy on drug addicts, check out ”Are Pharma Companies Exploiting those Trapped in Addiction?”.
Before we start throwing more people into prisons or locking more people away, the government should first look into how it’s creating the problem of drug addiction and how our current laws put corporate profits ahead of public health. The drug industry in the United States made $86,000,000,000 last year alone. More Americans died of drug overdoses in 2016 than died in the entirety of the Vietnam War.
Drug abuse is more deadly than HIV, AIDS, gun violence, and car crashes combined. I’m absolutely in favor of taking unreasonable steps to end addiction. However, I think something like a change in the laws governing opioids, and a change in medical practices that says hospitals should try a non-narcotic solution to pain control, before prescribing painkillers is the right direction.
Should you want more information about drugs and the harmful effects of drug or alcohol abuse, please download our FREE Online Drug Education Booklet and share with your family and friends. Together we can create a drug-free society without increasing the prison population.
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