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What Excites Millennials? A Stock Market Crash!

As markets careened lower to the tune of 10% in February, millennial investors got a thrill up their legs versus their older peers. 

According to a survey by Bankrate.com, 19% of millennials aged 18 through 37 said they had “feelings of excitement” during the correction vs. 8% for Generation-X and just 4% for Baby Boomers.

“If you’re a long-term investor you want to be able to buy low, and millennials had a chance to add to their retirement accounts at a lower price,” Bankrate analyst Taylor Tepper told Bloomberg. “In that sense, it’s very exciting.”

Over 25% of the giddy millennial investors reported adding to their stock holdings during the correction – far more than the other demographics. 

The survey conducted from February 28 through March 1, questioned 2,287 U.S. adults, only 1,063 of whom said they have an investment account. Of that, just 30% of millennials had investments vs. 46% of Gen-X and 54% of Baby Boomers. 

Bankrate’s Tepper also noted that millennials – who are disproportionately anti-Trump, saw February’s selloff as the first “Trump correction” after a massive 33% rally following the 2016 election. 

Safe Space

Millennials, scarred by the financial crisis and what they saw of the recession, have been been reluctant to invest according to Merrill Edge’s Aron Levine. 

“In stark contrast to older generations who are relying on outside sources for their future financial security, millennials are looking to their self-created savings years down the line,” Levine said in a December report. “Millennials place even greater trust in their own stewardship than they do in their personal relationships with their significant other and friends.”

During the financial crisis, millennials “saw their parents and grandparents suffer and struggle with either Social Security not being there or being there and not being enough,” Levine says. Thanks to that, millennials feel they “need to be relying on themselves and their own ability to save and invest.”

And of the millennials which do invest, according to the report, they don’t take big risks. 46% of millennials say they’re more financially conservative than their parents, while 35% say they’re more conservative than their grandparents!

Broke and broker

When you ain’t got nothing, you got nothing to lose

–Bob Dylan

With the average millennial college graduate carrying $30,000 in debt, and average millennial net worth standing at $10,900 (around half of what their parents were worth at the same age), it’s no wonder they’re cautious. 

According to a 2017 GoBankingRates survey, 67% of young millennials (age 18-24) have less than $1,000 in savings and 46% with no savings at all.

For “older” millennials the picture isn’t much different, with 61% of those between the ages of 25 and 34 reporting less than $1,000 in savings and 41% with no savings. 

During February’s selloff, investors overall kept calm – with only 6% pulling cash from their accounts. Nearly half of the Bankrate.com respondents said they felt “indifference” to the selloff, vs. 13% who were scared.

“President Trump sort of talks about [stocks] on Twitter all the time, so there’s a visibility around stock indexes hitting all-time highs,” Tepper said. “When the selloff happened, I was concerned that many people would start selling and change their behavior. But they didn’t really seem to do so.”

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Maryland City Raises Property Tax on Businesses by 800 Percent, in Bid to Attract More Businesses

Here’s a good rule of thumb: If you want more of something, don’t tax the dickens out of it. This principle appears to have eluded the town of Seat Pleasant, Maryland, which jacked up five businesses’ property taxes by 800 percent as part of a scheme to attract more businesses to the community.

Now two of the targeted companies are suing, claiming the small suburb—located just outside D.C—violated everything from their own charter to the U.S. Constitution when it imposed the tax.

“It is backward economic thinking. It’s borderline racketeering,” says Steven Franco, who owns and operates the Discount Mart and is one of the plaintiffs in the suit.

Franco saw his property taxes shoot up from less than $6,000 to over $55,000 in less than a year. This, he says, has had an “extremely adverse impact” on his business. “People’s schedules have been cut. Profits have been almost depleted….One guy had to get laid off.”

Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include married couple Si Quang Chen and Chang Lin Chen, who own a Chinese restaurant next to Franco’s store. Their property tax bill went from $3,482 to $31,180.

In May 2017, the Seat Pleasant council passed a yearly budget that included a special assessment to fund a “Special Revitalization District for Businesses.” The tax was supposed to bring in about $252,864 a year, which would be used to spur economic development and develop a “stronger financial portfolio” for the city.

According to Seat Pleasant’s charter, a special assessment like the one levied on Franco and the Chens must be spent on specific improvements to the targeted taxpayers’ properties—for example, by adding a sidewalk or sewer main. The city must also hold a public hearing on the assessment and give affected property owners a chance to appeal.

But the budget document makes it clear that the assessment is intended to benefit the entire town. Menawhile, the lawsuit alleges that Franco and the Chens received neither a public hearing nor a chance to appeal. The suit also claims that the tax violates the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on taking property without due process of law.

Mayor Eugene Grant, named as a defendant in the lawsuit, tells the local NBC affiliate that “all of these dollars are necessary for us to provide efficient and effective services for the residents of Seat Pleasant.”

Grant is a controversial politician, who held court for several months in a tent outside the Seat Pleasant City Hall after the city council voted to bar him from the building because of alleged hostile behavior toward city staff. In 2016, he engineered a takeover of the city council with a slate of candidates favorable to himself, in an election that sparked accusations of voter fraud.

Grant has expressed a desire to redevelop the area occupied by the businesses that were hit by the assessment. Franco thinks the tax is intended to force him to sell his property to the city, which already owns sizable nearby lots. Grant had previously floated the idea of using eminent domain to seize Franco’s property, according both to the lawsuit and to texts supposedly sent between Grant and Franco. (The texts have been posted to the website xposesp.com.)

Franco, whose store sells everything from milk to computers to school uniforms, says that Seat Pleasant is already a difficult place to do business, setting aside the special assessment.

Most Maryland personal property taxes—a tax paid on furniture, tools, and other movable property used in a business—are levied at less than 2 percent, with many towns and counties charging less than 1 percent or having no personal property tax period. Seat Pleasant’s personal property tax, by contrast, is 15 percent, over six times the Maryland jurisdiction with the next-highest rate.

Franco says that such high tax rates, plus the treatment he and other business owners have experienced, will only discourage the economic development that local officials say they want to create.

“Anyone who is considering coming in to do business is going to have serious second thought,” Franco says. “Seat Pleasant could be a great place, but their policies are backward economic thinking.”

A pre-trial hearing is scheduled for April 2.

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“…The Ends Don’t Justify The Means!”

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Various readers, fans, blog commenters, Facebook trolls, and auditors twanged on me all last week about my continuing interest in the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria, though there is no particular consensus of complaint among them — except for a general “shut up, already” motif. For the record, I’m far more interested in the hysteria itself than the Russia-meddled-in the-election case, which I consider to be hardly any case at all beyond 13 Russian Facebook trolls.

The hysteria, on the other hand, ought to be a matter of grave concern, because it appears more and more to have been engineered by America’s own intel community, its handmaidens in the Dept of Justice, and the twilight’s last gleamings of the Obama White House, and now it has shoved this country in the direction of war at a time when civilian authority over the US military looks sketchy at best. This country faces manifold other problems that are certain to reduce the national standard of living and disrupt the operations of an excessively complex and dishonest economy, and the last thing America needs is a national war-dance over trumped-up grievances with Russia.

The RussiaRussiaRussia narrative has unspooled since Christmas and is blowing back badly through the FBI, now with the firing (for cause) of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hours short of his official retirement (and inches from the golden ring of his pension). He was axed on the recommendation of his own colleagues in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and they may have been influenced by the as-yet-unreleased report of the FBI Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, due out shortly.

The record of misbehavior and “collusion” between the highest ranks of the FBI, the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign, several top political law firms, and a shady cast of international blackmail-peddlars is a six-lane Beltway-scale evidence trail compared to the muddy mule track of Trump “collusion” with Russia.

It will be amazing if a big wad of criminal cases are not dealt out of it, even as The New York Times sticks its fingers in its ears and goes, “La-la-la-la-la….”

It now appears that Mr. McCabe’s statements post-firing tend to incriminate his former boss, FBI Director James Comey — who is about to embark, embarrassingly perhaps, on a tour for his self-exculpating book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

A great aura of sanctimony surrounds the FBI these days. Even the news pundits seem to have forgotten the long, twisted reign of J. Edgar Hoover (1924 – 1972), a dangerous rogue who excelled at political blackmail. And why, these days, would any sane American take pronouncements from the CIA and NSA at face value? What seems to have gone on in the RussiaRussiaRussia matter is that various parts of the executive branch in the last months under Mr. Obama gave each other tacit permission, wink-wink, to do anything necessary to stuff HRC into the White House and, failing that, to derail her opponent, the Golden Golem of Greatness.

The obvious lesson in all this huggermugger is that the ends don’t justify the means.

I suspect there are basically two routes through this mess.

  • One is that the misdeeds of FBI officers, Department of Justice lawyers, and Intel agency executives get adjudicated by normal means, namely, grand juries and courts. That would have the salutary effect of cleansing government agencies and shoring up what’s left of their credibility at a time when faith in institutions hangs in the balance.

  • The second route would be for the authorities to ignore any formal response to an evermore self-evident trail of crimes, and to allow all that political energy to be funneled into manufactured hysteria and eventually a phony provocation of war with Russia.

Personally, I’d rather see the US government clean house than blow up the world over an engineered hallucination.

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Woman Struck, Killed by Self-Driving Car, Facebook Shares Tumble, GOP Challenge to Penn. Map Rejected: P.M. Links

  • FacebookA pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., has died after being struck by a self-driving car operated by Uber. This is believed to be the first death of a pedestrian due to autonomous cars. Uber has suspended testing of the cars in the city, as well as in San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Toronto.
  • Facebook shares tumbled today on reports that a consultancy firm got inappropriate access to more than 50 million users.
  • Judges have rejected a Republican challenge to Pennsylvania’s new congressional district map. The Supreme Court also declined to intervene.
  • Actor Cynthia Nixon today announced that she’s going to challenge Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the primary. Current polls don’t bode well for her chances.
  • Kroger announced it will stop carrying magazines that feature assault rifles in its stores, meaning they’re essentially banning pictures of guns. One wonders what will happen to magazine sales altogether if the grocery chain discovers that many guns themselves have “magazines.”
  • A tenants’ group says Jared Kushner’s company filed false paperwork with New York City to claim that none of the apartments in buildings it owned were rent-controlled. Many were.

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter, and don’t forget to sign up for Reason’s daily updates for more content.

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Seasteading Progress May Be Halted in French Polynesia

Has the seasteading movement lost its latest home?

Last year, the government of French Polynesia adopted a Memorandum of Understanding that said it would look into the prospects of allowing a seastead to be built near one of its islands. “Seasteads” are artificially created island polities that can experiment with different rules and add a level of competition to government.

As I reported in the June 2017 Reason, that

agreement commits the parties to “studies addressing the technical and legal feasibility of the project in French Polynesia” and to preparing a “special governing framework allowing the creation of the Floating Island Project located in an innovative special economic zone.” Since the Seasteading Institute is an educational nonprofit, the signing ceremony was also the public debut of a for-profit spinoff called Blue Frontiers, which intends to build, develop, and manage the first Polynesian seastead.

As Radio New Zealand first reported, French Polynesia’s ruling party, Tapura Huiraatira—currently embroiled in some serious political turmoil over pensions, and facing a backlash against the seasteading idea—has now declared that the Memorandum of Understanding does not actually commit them to definitely allowing a seastead to be built. It adds that the agreement technically expired at the end of 2017.

Randolph Hencken, one of the principles of Blue Frontiers and the Seasteading Institute, insists that this development will not derail the movement’s efforts. “French Polynesia—an archipelago of 118 islands—is one of the promising countries we are cultivating relationships with in regards to stationing seasteads,” he writes.

“Some people and some politicians from the Island of Tahiti—during the election cycle—have expressed opposition,” he adds. “This led to the majority party reminding people that the Memorandum of Understanding is a non-binding document and that there is not a backroom deal taking place with us. The [agreement] required us to perform environmental, economic, and legal studies—all of which we completed last year. There is no need to renew the [agreement].”

If French Polynesia doesn’t work out as the site of the first functioning seastead, Hencken says, “other communities which are concerned by sea level rise have reached out to embrace our project, and many more options are also being considered. There are many locations in protected waters, in French Polynesia and other countries, that we are interested in and are building relationships with the goal of starting seasteading. We plan to take our investment, resources, and talents to one of these locations and create mutually beneficial relationships with our neighboring communities.”

As Blue Frontiers’ Joe Quirk, author with Patri Friedman of the definitive book on seasteading, explains in detail in a post at Medium, whether or not French Polynesia’s ruling party is publicly supportive right now, many stakeholders in the island nation are still bullish on the idea.

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Aramco Kills Massive Offshore IPO, Will Only Offer Shares Domestically

The question that many oil traders were asking for the past two years – and certainly all of Wall Street’s investment banks – was answered moments ago when the WSJ reported  that as some had predicted, Saudi Arabia has decided to scale back its ambitions for a public offering for oil giant Aramco, either on the NYSE or elsewhere, and instead is moving ahead with a listing next year solely on the Saudi stock exchange while taking more time to decide if an international venue is worth it.

The news, which means Wall Street banks will make several hundred million less in IPO proceeds this year by not taking public the Saudi company which by some estimates was worth $2 trillion and had hoped to raise up to $100 billion, followed a Bloomberg report from last Friday according to which “Aramco said to get cool response on IPO from U.S. investors.”

While the original Bloomberg story was mysteriously taken down, what it reported was spot on: there was simply not enough demand for what would have been the world’s biggest IPO – at least, not at the $2 trillion price tag demanded by the Saudis.

At the informal dinners and meetings in New York, Houston and Washington, investors pushed back at several aspects of the deal, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private meetings. Among the issues raised were the $2 trillion valuation Saudi Arabia wants for the world’s largest oil producer, the scale of dividends Aramco’s prepared to pay and the impact of the shale boom on oil prices over the next few years.

Aramco said in a statement it wouldn’t “confirm or deny whether such meetings took place.” The company added its policy is not to provide running commentary on the course of the IPO.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who’s made the IPO a key part of his ambitions to ready the economy for the post-oil age, is preparing to visit the U.S. for a trip that will include a White House meeting with Donald Trump on March 20. Trump has said that he’s keen for the listing to come to New York, which is vying with London and Hong Kong to win the international portion of the share sale. Prince Mohammed is set to travel to Houston, America’s oil capital, as part of his U.S. trip.

Meanwhile, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman landed in Washington on Monday to begin a two-week cross-country trip to try and lure more foreign investment to the kingdom.

Compounding the difficulty of floating the shares in the US, Saudi officials had also reportedly been wary that offering shares in the US could pose legal risks. Last week, we reported that the IPO had been delayed until at least 2019 – and could even be shelved indefinitely. The Kingdom had reportedly selected New York, London and Hong Kong as the three “finalist” venues for the offering.

Developing.

 

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DeFANG’d: Dow Dumps Into Red For 2018 As Techs Tumble

It was hard for asset-gathering, commission-takers to argue this was “nothing”…

 

While all the attention was on Facebook, Bloomberg notes there was a little more going on that spooked markets…

“In addition to FB, FANG & Trump/Mueller, Wednesday’s FOMC raises possibility of four rate hikes. AAPL threatening supply chain if going w/ their own screens. To a lesser extent, Japanese polls showing Abe’s popularity flagging in light of patronage scandal.”

The day started off poorly with European stocks triggering a death cross…

 

But futures show that US equities got whacked on Facebook and Digital Taxation headlines… (and of course the standard late-day ramp)

 

Cash indices were all ugly…

 

The Dow Industrials and Transports are both back in the red for 2018… (NOTE by the close, Trannies managed to scramble back barely green but Industrials did not)

 

Nasdaq suffers its biggest drop since the Feb crash (the week after the biggest retail fund inflow into Nasdaq ETFs since the peak in 2000)…

 

Some not able ‘breaks’ today…

  • Nasdaq 100 broke its 50DMA

  • Dow broke its 100DMA (and broke below its Fib 38.2% retrace lows)

  • S&P broke its 50DMA and tested down to its 100DMA

  • VIX broke above its 50DMA

  • Small Caps (Russell 2000) broke below its 50DMA

  • Facebook broke its 200DMA

Faceplant! – first close below 200DMA since 1/5/17…

 

deFANG’d….

 

Dow broke a key support level…

 

FANGMAN Stocks were taken out back and shot…

 

With Facebook the stand-out for the monkey-hammering…FB now down 3% YTD (but don’t worry, NFLX is still up over 60%!)

 

Bank stocks have erased all the post-Payrolls spike…

 

VIX surged up to almost 22 before being hit back below 20…

 

And The VIX term structure inverted once again…

 

Nasdaq’s ‘VIX’ was the biggest jumper among the majors..

 

Bonds were bid from just before the US open, but reversed after Europe closed to end the day slightly higher in yield (extremely modest moves given the dump in stocks)…

 

 

The Dollar Index slid from the moment Europe opened (pushed their by ECB-comments driving EUR higher and Brexit comments on Cable)…

 

Cable managed a notable jump on hopeful Brexit transition deal…

 

Gold managed to make gains on the day as the dollar dipped. Silver was unch but crude and copper were lower…

 

Cryptos ended lower than their Friday close after Bitcoin briefly ramped back into the green after G-20 relief, but Trump’s executive order on Venezuela’s Petro sparked more concerns…

 

S&P tumbled back to meet gold as equal best performing asset class this year…

 

As a gentle reminder, one wonders if this sudden stock smackdown is a little warning message to Powell not to be too hawkish this week?

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Three Merrill Insiders To Split $83 Million In Largest-Ever Whistleblower Award

Who needs to work when you can just expose your boss’ criminal ways and retire with the “whistelblower” proceeds?

That’s the question three former Merrill Lynch insiders will ask themselves after their tips led to both a successful enforcement against parent company Bank of America in a $415 million settlement for engaging in complex transactions which allowed the bank to reduce the amount of client funds that had to be set aside in reserve accounts and – more importantly – the largest ever whistleblower award amounting to $83 million.

Two of the recipients will split a $50 million award, while a third person will receive $33 million for a tip in the same case.

The previous record was $30 million in 2014 – all done under an award provision under the post-crisis Dodd-Frank law. 

Jordan Thomas, an attorney with Labaton Sucharow, said he represented the Merrill insiders but declined to name them or say whether they still worked for the Bank of America unit. The three provided information that helped the SEC win a $415 million settlement with the bank in 2016 for engaging in complex transactions to reduce the amount of client funds that had to be set aside in reserve accounts. –Bloomberg

“By coming forward, these courageous executives protected millions of Merrill Lynch’s customers, but their impact is far greater than that,” Thomas said in a statement. “They are a shining example of integrity in action and will inspire others on Wall Street to break their silence.”

A “substantial part” of the award will be donated to charities, said Thomas – who ironically helped develop the SEC’s whistleblower program while employed in the agency’s enforcement unit. Thomas then launched Labaton Sucharow’s division representing tipsters in 2011.

One almost wonders how much Thomas’ legal fees will be as a result of a program developed by, well, Thomas.

Naturally, the SEC which will pocket the vast majority of the settlement proceeds, was delighted:

“These awards demonstrate that whistleblowers can provide the SEC with incredibly significant information that enables us to pursue and remedy serious violations that might otherwise go unnoticed,” said Jane Norberg, chief of the SEC’s whistleblower office. “We hope that these awards encourage others with specific, high-quality information regarding securities laws violations to step forward and report it to the SEC.” 

Individuals who provide credible and timely information to the SEC resulting in a successful enforcement action may be able to claim between 10 and 30% of monetary penalties over $1 million.

This in turn has prompted many on Wall Street to ask why work? Just scope out your employer for grossly illegal behavior, report it to the SEC and then retire with the proceeds.

* * *

The 2016 BofA case revolved around violations of the SEC’s customer protection rule, whereby Merrill Lynch engaged in a series of trades between 2009 and 2012 which artificially reduced the amount of customer funds required to be set aside,. The transactions “lacked economic substance,” which enabled the firm to finance its own trading activities, according to the SEC. 

Meanwhile, while trading on Wall Street is hardly as reputable as it once was, the real future may be in ratting out your boss: since the program began in 2012, over $262 million has been paid to whistleblowers according to the SEC. The identity of whistleblowers and the information they provide are not disclosed by the agency. 

Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act also prohibits retaliation by employers against whistleblowers – who are provided with a private cause of action in the event they are “discharged or discriminated against by their employers in violation of the Act.” 

Alternatively…

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Identifying ‘Fake News’ Is More Art Than Science: New at Reason

A recent article in The New York Times‘ faulted Lawrence Kudlow, recently appointed as chairman of the National Economic Council, for having been “wildly wrong” by, as the Times put it, “denying the existence of recessions while they were already underway during President George W. Bush’s administration.” The Times quoted Kudlow as writing in December 2007, “Despite all the doom and gloom from the economic pessimistas…the resilient U.S. economy continues moving ahead.”

It’s not clear that Kudlow’s December 2007 view qualifies as “wildly wrong.” The nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, which has a committee of eminent academic economists that retrospectively dates recessions, describes December 2007 as “the peak of the business cycle,” meaning that it was both the “last month” of the expansion and the “first month of the recession.” Fourth quarter real GDP growth in 2007 was positive, not negative.

Even if Kudlow was wrong, wildly or less than wildly, in December 2007, he sure had plenty of company. One Times news headline from that month was “Shares Rally on Surprisingly Strong Jobs Data.” The lead paragraph of that news article spoke of “renewed optimism about the outlook for the economy.” Another Times news headline from that month was “Economy Holding Up, Reports Find.” That article began, “Maybe the American economy is not going to keel over just yet, after all. Government reports released Thursday showed surprising resilience in the broader economy.”

That’s why identifying “fake news” is often as much an art as it is a science, writes Ira Stoll.

Read the full article.

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Trump Loses The Drug Dealer Vote: Death Penalty Will Be Part Of White House Opioid Response

When President Donald Trump once again praised Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte for his encouragement of the extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and drug users last week, many in the audience in Moon Township, PA., probably thought this was more authoritarian posturing from a president who has made no secret of his respect for strongmen like Duterte, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“I don’t know if it’s popular. I don’t now if that’s unpopular,” Trump said, after asserting that some drug dealers are responsible for thousands of deaths.

But it looks like Trump will soon learn the answer to what many probably thought was a rhetorical question.

Because as it turns out, Trump was actually providing a sneak peak into his long-awaited comprehensive plan to combat the opioid epidemic.

Trump

To wit, the president is expected to released a plan on Monday to combat the opioid epidemic. And moving to impose the death penalty for some drug dealers is a cornerstone of said plan, per the Hill.

Trump will make the announcement during his first visit as president to New Hampshire,  state that has been hit hard by the opioid crisis. The epidemic of drug abuse featured heavily into Trump’s pre-primary rhetoric. And later, after winning office, Trump famously brought up New Hampshire as an example of the heavy toll that heroin takes on a community, adding that, in some places, drugs are “cheaper than candy bars.”

Per Reuters, the White House will also seek to cut opioid prescriptions by a third over the next three years by “promoting practices that reduce overprescription.”

Of course, while “death to drug dealers” is bound to grab some headlines, the Trump proposal comes with a major caveat: The death penalty will only be sought “when it’s appropriate under current law.”

That means dealers will probably need to be found responsible for multiple deaths.

“The Department of Justice will seek the death penalty against drug traffickers when it’s appropriate under current law,” said Andrew Bremberg, director of Trump’s Domestic Policy Council, in the briefing detailing the plan.

However, the White House was vague about when such extreme sentencing measures would be appropriate.

Here’s Reuters

The White House did not offer any specific examples of when it would be appropriate to seek the death penalty for drug dealers and referred further questions to the Justice Department.

Current federal law allows for the death penalty in certain drug cases including murder related to a drug trafficking offense and murder committed during a drug-related drive-by shooting, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit capital punishment monitor.

Kellyanne Conway, who is nominally in charge of the White House’s response to the opioid crisis, said fighting opioid abuse is a bipartisan issue.

“The opioid crisis is viewed by us at the White House as a nonpartisan problem searching for bipartisan solutions, and the Trump administration remains committed to fighting this epidemic from all fronts,” Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president, said on a call with reporters Sunday.

In a policy that echoes the Reagan-era war on drugs – policies that liberal harm-reduction advocates say don’t work – Trump will also seek to lower the quantities needed to trigger mandatory minimum sentences “to match the new reality of drugs like fentanyl, which are lethal in much, much smaller doses…”

In addition to pursuing street dealers, the plan directs the Justice Department to aggressively pursue criminally negligent doctors and pharmacies and to take criminal and civil actions against opioid manufacturers that break the law. Indeed, attorneys generals from dozens of states are suing opioid manufacturers for allegedly misleading doctors and the public about the addiction potential of their drugs.

Finally, the proposal will also seek to expand access to treatment facilities to help the addicted get treatment.

As the Daily Mail points out, 33 countries allow the death penalty for drug offenses, many of them in Asia.

Map

Surprisingly, the US is among them, at least in theory.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in Kennedy vs Louisiana left open the question of whether the death penalty for “offenses against the State” including “drug kingpin activity” would be constitutionally permissible.

Late last year, President Trump declared the opioid epidemic a national health emergency, a measure that provided some more resources for combating the epidemic, but stopped short of the national emergency designation that would’ve opened up access to disaster relief funds.

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