President Donald Trump on Monday will call for new steps to combat the opioid epidemic, including a push to reduce opioid prescriptions by a third over three years, asking the Justice Department to seek more death-penalty cases against drug traffickers under current law, and for federal support to expand the availability of overdose-reversal medication.* * *Other elements of the strategy, the White House said, would include a fresh public-awareness campaign about drug abuse, a research-and-development partnership between the National Institutes of Health and pharmaceutical companies into opioid prescription alternatives, tougher sentences for fentanyl traffickers, and screening of all prison inmates for opioid addiction.* * *"The Department of Justice will seek the death penalty against drug traffickers when it's appropriate under current law," said Andrew Bremberg, the president's top domestic-policy adviser.* * *
In November, a presidential commission headed by Mr. Trump's one-time political rival for the Republican presidential nomination, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, issued a 56-recommendation report that included calls for the federal government to set up drug courts across the U.S., retrain medical prescribers on opioid use and reduce incentives for doctors to offer the powerful painkillers. It also called for engaging with states to expand access to naloxone, an overdose-reversal drug.
The administration accepts all 56 recommendations, a senior White House official said Sunday.
Seeking the death penalty is unlikely to have significant deterrent effect unless and until executions are regularly carried out. To that end, the executive branch can take several steps without congressional action:
1. Fix the problem of availability of execution barbiturates (such as thiopental and pentobarbital) by importing the needed ingredients itself and distributing them to the states.
2. Put a federal execution protocol into place and resume federal executions.
3. Insist that federal courts observe 28 U.S.C. ยง 2266(a): "[T]he adjudication of any motion under section 2255 by a person under sentence of death, shall be given priority by the district court and by the court of appeals over all noncapital matters."
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