Washington D.C. [US]: United States President Donald Trump will address a gathering at Manchester Community College on Monday to discuss the menace of opioid addiction.
As per an official at the White House Trump is set to announce a plan to combat opioid drug addiction nationwide while announcing death penalty for drug traffickers under the current law dealing with curbing of drug supply across the US.
Trump will make a public appearance along with his wife Melania Trump to steer forward his anti-drug campaign among the students and also to discuss his drug eradication plan.
“The drug eradication plan as proposed by Trump shall focus on three areas including law enforcement and interdiction, prevention and education through a sizable advertising campaign, improving the ability to fund treatment through the federal government and help those impacted by the epidemic find jobs while fighting addiction”, CNN quoted White House counselor Kellyanne Conway as saying.
The plan would further elaborate on the marketing plan to produce advertisements to discourage drug consumption among the people.
With this, Trump is expected to act on his earlier statement that the administration would produce “really tough, really big, really great advertising” in efforts to convince citizens to not use opioids.
The drug abuse has been becoming a pertinent issue in the US as the number of drug addicts are increasing at an alarming rate.
In 2016, the drug abuse was reported to have claimed more than 59,000 lives across the US.
Earlier on March 2 Trump for the first time advocated for a death penalty at the Opioid Summit at the White House.
He said, “Some countries have a very, very tough penalty, the ultimate penalty. And by the way, they have much less of a drug problem than we do. So we’re going to have to be very strong on penalties,”
He added that the ‘drug dealers’ and ‘drug pushers’ are ‘really doing (the) damage’.
He further said that the only way to deal with the problem of drugs is to catch a drug dealer and put him away for a very, very long time.
Trump also advocated bringing lawsuits against some of the opioid companies after consulting his embattled Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
In August, Trump called the opioid crisis a “national emergency,” but did not sign a formal declaration designating it as such.
Trump announced the tackling of opioid abuse as one of his key steps when he assumed office. However, he has received criticism from certain sections for allegedly taking only limited actions to address the crisis. (ANI)