Another Trump Fantasy: Kill All the Drug Dealers
Once more, we are treated to Donald Trump once again showing why we were stupid, as voters, when we allowed this ignorant asshole to rise to the presidency. Today, he made a speech in which he praised China’s government for its approach to drug dealers and drug abuse. He actually claims the Chinese have almost no drug problem, which indicates another fantasy.
The fantasy is two-fold in this case. First of all, who except for Trump believes there is no drug problem in China. Any of us who know anything about the Chinese Communist government know they are not exactly transparent when it comes to discussions of cultural problems.
This seems to be an annual Trump thing. During an address During the address, last February 15, Trump spoke off the cuff about the substance abuse epidemic in the U.S., which is well-known because we are transparent about such things. However, he also talked about conversations he had with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who apparently told Trump that China did not have a drug problem. The reason for that, according to Xi, is because China uses the death penalty to punish drug dealers. However, that article showed that China does, indeed, have a serious drug problem.
A report from China’s National Narcotics Control Commission reported 2.51 million drug users in China as of late 2016. Not only that, but the reported number was rising at a rate of 7% per year. China registers drug users and according to the Brookings Institution showed that the official number of officially registered drug users in China had risen every year between 1998 and 2016. That means the actual number of Chinese drug users is probably much closer to the estimated 30.5 million people currently using drugs here in the United States, including marijuana, as of 2017, according to federal data. (Source)
Put simply, Trump is once again fantasizing about being able t save the nation from a vexing problem that we haven’t gotten a handle on for many decades, because he thinks he has the “simple” solution. In fairness, even Trump had to agree that the United States probably “wasn’t ready” for a death penalty for drug dealers. But he’s clearly thinking about it. Our death penalty is almost dead, precisely because it doesn’t work and the government largely screws up when it comes time to implement it.
It’s simple, right? “Catch a drug dealer and you’ll solve the drug problem.” Sounds like a plan, except that such a thing never works. It’s just one of Trump’s asinine fantasies, and we have to get rid of him, to get rid of the fantasies. We have to promise ourselves that we will never again hire a child to occupy the highest office in the land.
Originally published at The Pragmatic Progressive.
