From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

President Trump said in a New Hampshire speech that he wants drug dealers to get the death penalty. But in fact, laws already allow the death penalty for these people in certain circumstances. Far more effective in our “War on Drugs’’ redux would be, for example, going after physicians who over-prescribe opiates and punishing such despicable  drug companies as Purdue Pharma, controlled by the social-climbing Sackler family,  that obscured the perils of  such prescription opiates  as OxyContin. And Trump could take strong action to persuade Chinese dictator Xi Jinping to stop Chinese labs from mailing  the hyper-dangerous synthetic opiate fentanyl to America. 

Obviously much more treatment is needed, too. Trump was in New Hampshire in part because the Granite State has long had among the highest rates of drug use in the country. It also, according to a study done at Dartmouth, “has the lowest -per-capita spending for drug treatment in New England and the second-lowest in the nation.’’

Drug-abuse experts also cite the flip side of the Granite State's  attractive rural and exurban qualities in the state's drug problems: Too many people are bored and feel that there are too few interesting things to do in the state, much of which is woodlands.

Would Trump’s wall on our Mexican border help? Maybe a little, but not much. Drugs, like money, are very fungible, and dispirited, anxious  Americans have an insatiable thirst for them.