Republican Maine Gov. Paul LePage, in his latest controversial comments on how to deal with drug dealers, suggested the citizens of Maine drive them out with guns.
“Everybody in Maine, we have Constitutional Carry,” LePage told reporters on Jan. 27, according to WGME. “Load up and get rid of the drug dealers. Because folks, they’re killing our kids.”
The governor has had many colorful ideas for how to cleanse his state of narcotics dealers, including public executions. Maine abolished the death penalty in 1887, notes WGME.
“What I think we ought to do is bring the guillotine back,” LePage told WVOM on Jan. 26.
“We could have public executions and have, you know, we could even have guessing which hole it falls in.”
LePage is currently pushing for legislation to have drug dealers whose product leads to death be sentenced to 20 years to life in prison.
“We’ve got to go 20 years, we’ve got to keep them here until they die,” the governor said. “If you want my honest opinion, we should give them an injection of the stuff they sell.”
LePage was accused of conflating “drug traffickers” with African-Americans during a Jan. 6 town hall meeting, when he discussed his disdain for people who sell drugs, according to CNN.
LePage said:
"These are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty. These type of guys. They come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, then they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we've got to deal with down the road."
LePage gave a half-hearted apology for his remarks two days later.
“I made one slip-up,” the governor said. “I may have many slip-ups … Instead of saying, ‘Maine women,’ I said, ‘White women.’ I’m not going to apologize to the Maine women for that because if you go to Maine you will see we are essentially 95 percent white.”
Now the governor has suggested that the people of Maine rise up and drive narcotics peddlers out of the state.
“Where’s the outrage?” he asked, according to WGME. “Let’s get mad. Let’s stop it.”
He denied encouraging acts of vigilante justice but repeated that he would like drug dealers to face the death penalty.
“If you don’t try, you never get anywhere,” LePage concluded.
Sources: CNN, WGME, WVOM / Photo credit: Matt Gagnon/Wikimedia Commons