Donald Trump helped release drug prisoners. Now he wants to execute them

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. “I want to back her.” That same year, Mr Trump spoke favourably of China’s policy of capital punishment for drug traffickers. On 20 March, 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo to all US Attorneys to consider “every lawful tool” to combat the overdose crisis – and “strongly” encouraged prosecutors to seek the death penalty for people caught “dealing in extremely large quantities of drugs.” The president went even further, saying killing drug dealers could be necessary, even if it was unpopular with Americans. “I don’t know if that’s unpopular, probably you’ll have some people that say, ‘Oh, that’s, not nice, but – but these people are killing our kids and they’re killing our families and we have to do something.” Trump calls for 'quick' death penalty for drug dealers saying US is 'going to hell very fast' Sitting with members of his cabinet inside the White House on 2 January, 2019, he said China’s President Xi Jinping agreed to “criminalise” the synthetic opioid fentanyl in the country “at the highest level, which means, I assume, the death penalty.” A few weeks later, on 15 February, once again lauded China’s policy of executing drug offenders. To the activist, now 62, the former president’s rhetoric is a chilling reminder of the ongoing war on drugs and the shadow of its violent reactionary political movements, including threats from then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his proposed “Drug Importer Death Penalty Act” while Ms Povah was incarcerated in the 1990s.