Jim and Jeanne Moser of East Kingston, who lost their son Adam to addiction, helped President Donald Trump illustrate Monday how the drug crisis has hit the New Hampshire – and how the Granite State has hit back.
The Mosers joined Trump onstage as he visited Manchester to outline his wide-ranging plan to battle the nation’s opioid epidemic, placing a heavy emphasis on law enforcement and prevention and repeatedly pitching the death penalty for drug dealers.
But the Mosers – their loss, but also their resiliency and efforts to combat the problem – typified the role of the Granite State in the president’s visit as both a sympathetic example of the toll drugs can take and as a model for the fight ahead.
The couple’s son became addicted to prescription pills he found in their kitchen cabinet and eventually died from a fentanyl overdose. Since their son’s death, the Mosers began the Zero Left initiative, to help families get rid of excess painkillers.
“We applaud your strength and your leadership,” Trump said standing next to the grieving parents, adding that their son did “not die in vain.”
The president vowed to “get tough” on drug dealers and pushed for the death penalty during a nearly 40-minute speech at Manchester Community College, pledging a heavy hand in law enforcement while also highlighting the state’s prevention and treatment efforts.
“We pledge to honor the memory of those you lost with action and determination and resolve,” he said to the Manchester crowd. “We’ll get it.”
Trump – in his first trip back to New Hampshire since the eve of the 2016 presidential election – also gave a couple of notable shout-outs to Gov. Chris Sununu, who was seated in the front row of the audience, but did not appear onstage with the president.
In his dozens of campaign stops during the 2016 primaries and the general election, Trump often vowed to take action to help Granite Staters deal with the state’s drug crisis. New Hampshire’s been hard-hit by the crisis and currently ranks third in the country, behind West Virginia and Ohio, in opioid-related deaths per capita, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The president told the audience – comprising mostly Republican politicians and Trump supporters – that “it all started right here in New Hampshire.”
“I see what you’re going through. It’s about as bad as there is anywhere in the country. And I said I would be back and we are back,” Trump said.
Trump has faced criticism that he hasn’t delivered on his campaign pledge. That may be why early in his address the president touted that “we’ve worked with Congress to ensure $6 billion additional dollars going through right now in new funding in 2018 and 2019 to combat the opioid crisis.”
That money – included in a massive budget deal passed by Congress last month to avert a federal government shutdown – is expected to be passed by the U.S. House and Senate this week as part of a $1 trillion spending bill, which would keep the government afloat at least through the end of September. It would be a sixfold increase over current federal funding in the battle against the drug crisis.
On the flight onboard Air Force One up to New Hampshire, Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway said the administration would ultimately like to see $13 billion dedicated to the federal efforts.
Trump spent a large portion of his speech praising federal, state and local law enforcement for their efforts in fighting the drug crisis, giving specific mention to ICE and DEA agents as well as New Hampshire state troopers.
He also called for stricter sentences for those peddling drugs.
“If we don’t get tough on the drug dealers, we’re wasting our time. And that toughness includes the death penalty,” he said.
“Other countries don’t play games,” the president added. “But the ultimate penalty has to be the death penalty.”
The ACLU of New Hampshire condemned the idea of using the death penalty to punish drug dealers.
“The president’s suggestion that we are wasting our time unless we are executing drug dealers is irresponsible and reprehensible,” said Devon Chaffee, executive director of ACLU-NH. “What the president failed to mention is that the death penalty does not act as a deterrent, does not reduce crime, and certainly does not help any of the New Hampshire communities reeling from addiction and the opioid crisis.”
The Justice Department said the federal death penalty is available for limited drug-related offenses, including violations of the “drug kingpin” provisions in federal law.
It is not clear whether the death penalty, even for traffickers whose product causes multiple deaths, would be constitutional. Doug Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University, predicted the issue would be litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump also gave multiple compliments to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was sitting on the stage with other dignitaries and who appeared to be back in the president’s good graces after firing Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe on Friday.
In vowing to cut nationwide opioid prescriptions by a third over the next three years, Trump said that “our Department of Justice is looking very seriously into bringing major litigation against some of these drug companies” that many blame across the country for the overprescription of opioids.
The president also announced federal funding for the development of non-addictive painkillers in order to take “action to reduce drug demand by prevent Americans from becoming addicted in the first place.”
“The best way to beat the drug crisis is keep people from getting hooked on drugs to begin with,” he said.
As part of that effort, he said, the federal government will spend money to produce “great commercials showing how bad it is.”
He explained that “when they see these commercials they’ll say ‘I don’t want any part of it.’ ”
“It’s the least-expensive thing we can do. Where you scare them from ending up like the people in the commercials,” he said.
And the president announced the creation of a federal government website – crisisnextdoor.gov – “where Americans can share their stories about the opioid addictions.”
The president also discussed how his policies, including a U.S.-Mexico border wall and punishing “sanctuary” cities that refuse to comply with federal immigration authorities, would help reduce the flow of drugs and help end the addiction epidemic.
“Ninety percent of the heroin in America comes from our southern border where eventually the Democrats will agree with us and we’ll build the wall to keep the damn drugs out,” the president said.
But he also criticized congressional Democrats, saying “they don’t want it to be approved.”
The mention of the wall brought the biggest applause of the day from the friendly audience.
The president also called for shutting down illegal online marketplaces where drug are coming in from China and other countries, and pledged to equip first responders nationwide with the overdose-reversing drug Narcan.
Trump was greeted on the tarmac at the airport in Manchester by the city’s Democratic Mayor Joyce Craig, as well as Sununu, New Hampshire’s first Republican governor in a dozen years. The moment provided a rare public appearance of Trump together with Sununu, who’s up for re-election this year.
The president lavished Sununu with praise at the top of his address and later, when he goaded the governor into standing for the crowd.
“Your governor, who is great, the numbers are going down in New Hampshire. Chris, stand up,” Trump said. “It’s one of the few bright spots where the numbers are actually going down. And that’s a tremendous achievement. Thank you, Chris.”
Sitting next to the governor was his father, former governor John H. Sununu, who was a vocal critic of Trump during the 2016 primaries. Trump joked that “there was nobody on television tougher. And then we met each other and liked each other and he went from the worst to the best.”
After arriving in New Hampshire, the president made a stop at the Manchester Central Fire Station to get an up-close look at Safe Station, the program originated in Manchester that opens up the city’s 10 fire stations as intake centers for people seeking help battling drug and alcohol addiction – without the threat of arrest.
In a statement, Gov. Sununu touted the visit as a showcase for the state’s approach to the drug crisis.
“Today, New Hampshire’s leaders showed the president our unique programs, which have the ability to serve as a model of best practice across this country.”
New Hampshire’s all-Democratic congressional delegation was invited to attend the Manchester Community College event, but with the House and Senate in session Monday afternoon, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan and congresswomen Carol Shea-Porter and Annie Kuster were in Washington.
“The proposal the president discussed today in Manchester includes important policies to help strengthen treatment, prevention, recovery, and law enforcement efforts – including many policies that I have long supported and a number that I have already introduced legislation to implement,” Hassan said, complimenting parts of Trump’s plan.
But in a concern shared by others in the delegation, Hassan added “while there are many strong components of this proposal, this is not a crisis that we can solve just by being tougher on drug dealers – although we need to do that – and I am concerned that the president does not seem to fully appreciate that we cannot arrest our way out of this crisis.”
(Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.)