DRUG FACTS DO NOT SUPPORT PRESIDENT TRUMP’S STATEMENTS

…A drug dealer showing of his payments of over $250,000

Just one more falsehood from the American president

Well, Trump did it again!

This man just can’t tell the truth as his falsehoods just keep on coming.

During a panel discussion in Washington on March 22, 2018, President Trump stated the following:

These people [drug dealers] kill thousands of people over the course of their lives through drugs. So we’re going to have to get much, much tougher in terms of penalty. And if you want to stop it — if you look at certain countries where they have, as an example, the death penalty, and say, ‘How’s your drug problem?’ And they will tell you, ‘We don’t have much of a drug problem.’ ”

Based on this statement, The Post’s fact checkers awarded the president Three Pinocchio’s for an estimate 85% false statement.

Here are the facts that are form both Harm Reduction International (HRI), a nongovernmental organization partly funded by the European Union that keeps track of death-penalty laws for drug offenses around the world, and from Amnesty International (AI).   AI states the following: “International law requires countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty need to restrict their use of the death penalty to the ‘most serious crimes,’ which does not include drug-related offenses.”

Trump’s prescription for solving drug trafficking and the deadly opioid epidemic appears to be very simple: “Give the death penalty to drug dealers and problem is solved.” 

Not True.

The Facts:

Trump argues that certain countries that put drug dealers to death do not have “much of a drug problem.”  But of 33 countries and territories that impose death sentences for drug offenses, only seven do so with regularity, this is according to HRI.

China, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Vietnam all have significant problems with drug production or trafficking, despite their use of capital punishment for these crimes.

Saudi Arabia has the death penalty but only has a slight drug problem. Singapore does not really have a drug problem, but it is also a relatively small country with a population roughly equal to that of Colorado or Wisconsin. Trump’s comment is not an apt comparison.

More Details:

The majority of those sentenced to death and executed for drug offenses are usually low level couriers who often experience overlapping forms of discrimination and exclusion. They are often subjected to forced confessions and unfair trials,” this is according to HRI. “Not only do these executions continue to fail to achieve any reduction in drug use and trafficking, they are also a clear violation of fundamental human rights under international law.”

China News reports indicate that China has a significant drug-trafficking problem. “In March [2017], the China National Narcotics Control Commission told media that China’s seizure of synthetic drugs including methamphetamine and ketamine has ‘surged by 106% year on year in 2016,’ The official Xinhua news agency said in November that a part of Guangdong province is “plagued with rampant drug production and trafficking”.

AI says China executed more people in 2016 than all other countries combined. But they could not find any data tracking down the many drug offenders been executed.

According to HRI, with the exception of China, Iran accounted for nearly 90% of executions for drug offenses recorded worldwide in the past three years, “with at least 1,176 executions carried out from 2015 to 2017. Of those, 242 were carried out in 2017”, HRI reported.

Singapore’s population stood at 5.6 million in 2016, less than New York City’s and more than Los Angeles’s. It is geographically small, about one-quarter the size of Rhode Island. Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, the country’s ambassador to the United States, says Singapore’s tough drug laws are an effective deterrent to trafficking. “Singapore has one of the lowest rates of drug abuse in the world: 30 opiates abusers per 100,000 people, compared with 600 in the United States,” he wrote in a letter to the editor to The Washington Post last March.

According to HRI: “Singapore has only executed eight people for drug offenses from 2015 through 2017.”

The facts hardly support the president’s claim.  That was why he was awarded the Three Pinocchio’s.

Copyright G.Ater  2018