US President Donald Trump says putting drug traffickers to death as China does is “smart” (Brendan Smialowski)

Washington (AFP) – President Donald Trump on Friday praised China’s use of capital punishment for drug dealers, suggesting that the United States would deal better with narcotics trafficking if it put offenders to death.

In China, drug dealers get “a thing called the death penalty. Our criminal drug dealer gets a thing called ‘how about a fine?'” Trump told reporters at the White House.

“So if we want to get smart, we can get smart. You can end the drug problem. You can end it a lot faster than you think.”

It is not the first time that Trump has advocated capital punishment for drug related crimes.

Last March, he suggested the United States could bring in the death penalty for drug dealers.

Officials indicated there would be no attempt to change the law to make the death penalty mandatory for trafficking alone, a move that would could well run afoul of Supreme Court rulings on proportional punishment.

In those rulings, the high court suggested that nothing other than murder can be considered a capital offense.

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