Poll: 3-in-4 Americans Oppose Reducing Penalties for Drug Traffickers

The vast majority of Americans oppose reducing penalties and sentences for drug traffickers who have helped fuel the country’s opioid crisis that has now killed than the Vietnam War.

A poll conducted for the Foundation for Safeguarding Justice, about 74 percent of Americans said they oppose plans to reduce penalties for the traffickers of heroin, fentanyl, and other drugs. Reducing sentences for drug traffickers is the core foundation of the First Step Act which has been endorsed by President Trump despite opposition from the law enforcement community and conservatives like Sheriff David Clarke.

Roughly 76 percent of Americans say the U.S. federal government is not tough enough on drug traffickers or just tough enough with current laws.

Among Republican voters — whom Trump must bring out to vote for him in his 2020 re-election — nearly 90 percent say they oppose reducing penalties for drug traffickers, while a majority of Democrats, 70 percent, and Independents, 73 percent, oppose the crime leniency plan.

Opposition to reducing penalties for drug traffickers stretches across racial lines in the U.S., the poll found, with 77 percent of white Americans, 71 percent of black Americans, and 64 percent of Hispanic Americans saying they oppose easing up on the traffickers of heroin and fentanyl.

A majority of American men, 73 percent, and women, 74 percent, oppose reducing penalties for drug traffickers.
The First Step Act is supported by the GOP megadonor billionaire Koch brothers who successfully lobbied Trump, along with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, to support the prison reform legislation.

The prison reform plan will cut penalties for drug traffickers in at least half and immediately result in the release of 4,000 convicted criminals.