Trump keen to emulate Singapore’s death penalty for drug traffickers: Report

WASHINGTON — United States President Donald Trump is keen to follow Singapore’s lead and introduce mandatory death penalty and other harsher penalties for drug trafficking offences.

This is according to American news website Axios, who spoke to five sources who had discussed the matter with the President.

Axios said Mr Trump is an admirer of Singapore’s tough anti-drug stance, and has been “telling friends for months that the country’s policy to execute drug traffickers is the reason its drug consumption rates are so low”.

“He says that a lot,” Axios quoted a source who has spoken to Mr Trump at length about the subject.

“He says, ‘When I ask the Prime Minister of Singapore do they have a drug problem (the Prime Minister replies), ‘No. Death penalty’.”

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has met Mr Trump twice officially, the most recent when he visited Washington in October last year. They have also spoken on the phone on numerous other occasions.

A senior administration official was quoted by Axios as saying: “(Mr Trump) often jokes about killing drug dealers... He’ll say, ‘You know the Chinese and Filipinos don’t have a drug problem. They just kill them’.”

According to Axios’ sources, Mr Trump “often leaps into a passionate speech about how drug dealers are as bad as serial killers and should all get the death penalty.”

The President has insisted that a softer approach to drug will never work, and that the “government has got to teach children that they’ll die if they take drugs and they’ve got to make drug dealers fear for their lives”.

However, he also admitted it would probably be “impossible to get a law this harsh passed under the American system”, said the report.

Ms Kellyanne Conway, the Presidential counselor who leads the White House’s anti-drug efforts, told Axios Mr Trump’s point was that “some states execute criminals for killing one person but a dealer who brings a tiny quantity of fentanyl into a community can cause mass death in just one weekend, often with impunity”.

It was suggested that Mr Trump may back legislation requiring a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for traffickers who deal as little as two grams of fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

Almost one third of who died of drug overdose in 2016 in the US did so on synthetic opioids like fentanyl, according to the National Institute for Drug Abuse.

Currently, in the US, the mandatory five-year sentence is triggered for traffickers dealing with 40 grams or more.

Mr Trump had declared in October that the US’ opioid epidemic was a public health emergency, calling it a “national shame and a human tragedy”, adding that ending it “will require the resolve of our entire country”.

He also singled out China, where much of fentanyl is manufactured and exported.

Ms Conway said tougher policies against opioids would have widespread support. “There is an appetite among many law enforcement, health professionals and grieving families that we must toughen up our criminal and sentencing statutes to match the new reality of drugs like fentanyl, which are so lethal in such small doses,” she added.

“The president makes a distinction between those that are languishing in prison for low-level drug offenses and the kingpins hauling thousands of lethal doses of fentanyl into communities, that are responsible for many casualties in a single weekend.

Axio reported that Mr Trump and some of his advisers are also discussing whether they might adopt other aspects of Singapore’s “zero tolerance” drug policies, like bringing more anti-drug education into schools.