Maine's GOP governor now instructing citizens to "load up and get rid of the drug dealers”

Gov. Paul LePage apparently doesn't believe his public calls to bring back the guillotine are enough

By Sophia Tesfaye

Senior Politics Editor

Published January 29, 2016 2:59PM (EST)

Maine Gov. Paul LePage  (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Maine Gov. Paul LePage (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

One day after calling for the return of public executions via guillotine, Maine's controversial republican governor offered a better solution to fighting crime: Citizens take up arms and shoot drug dealers.

"Everybody in Maine, we have Constitutional Carry. Load up and get rid of the drug dealers,” Gov. Paul LePage told Maine's WGME on Wednesday.

Although Maine long ago abolished the death penalty, LePage told CBS 13 Reporter Brad Rogers that he would "absolutely" love to see its return to punish convicted drug dealers. "They're killing our kids," LePage said of nonviolent drug offenders, arguing that death from drug overdose is homicide. "I know of a man and woman that died in the same night from the drugs they bought from one dealer.  Two homicides, I consider those two homicides,” LePage said.

On Tuesday, LePage said of drug dealers, "we should give them an injection of the stuff they sell.” The governor, who has grabbed national headlines recently for saying that out-of-state drug dealers with names like "D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty," typically "impregnate a young white girl before they leave," has focused much of his outrage about the state's heroin epidemic on drug dealers. "What I think we ought to do is bring the guillotine back,” LePage joked Tuesday.

Watch Gov. LePage's most recent comments to WGME-TV:

 

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By Sophia Tesfaye

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's senior editor for news and politics, and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

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