Trump: ‘If We Police Properly’ We Should Not Have to Legalize Drugs
STEPHANOPOULOS: "A lot of talk about addiction on the campaign trail lately, especially on — in New Hampshire."
TRUMP: "Right."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "And you’re an absolutist on this issue. You don’t — you’ve never used drugs, you say, no smoking, no drinking. What shaped that decision?"
TRUMP: "Well, I really — you know, I’ve seen so many people over the years where they became alcoholics or there — it was so tremendous, so many people, and so tremendous in every respect, and they became alcoholics or they started taking drugs and they became, in a way, addicted. And I’ve watched it. And just by watching what happens to people and I never drank and I never took drugs and I don’t smoke. I mean, you know, I’m lucky in that respect. And I have friends trying not to smoke, as an example. Let’s say that’s the lesser of the three but still it’s a problem. I don’t understand why would they smoke? Why would they drink? Why would they take drugs? The way you don’t understand it is if you don’t do it. And I always tell my kids don’t drink, don’t smoke. Who knows? I think they don’t but who really know what’s going on."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You — you’ve also —"
TRUMP: "It’s a tremendous problem, and you know, in New Hampshire, I’ve got, I’ve developed such great friendships in New Hampshire. They are having a tremendous drug problem, a tremendous heroin problem, in New Hampshire. And a lot of that comes in through the southern border, which I will stop because I’m putting up a wall. Mexico’s going to pay for the wall. It will be built. And if you look at the kind of numbers we do in Mexico, they are making a fortune off the United States, and we will stop that problem to a large extent. But the heroin problem in New Hampshire and other places is [indecipherable] —"
STEPHANOPOULOS: "But you know, you used to think —"
TRUMP: "— and we have to stop the source."
STEPHANOPOULOS: "You used to think that legalization, taking the profit out, would solve that problem. What changed your mind?"
TRUMP: "Well, I did, and I — I — not think about it, I said it’s something that should be studied and maybe should continue to be studied. But it’s not something I’d be willing to do right now. I think it’s something that I’ve always said maybe it has to be looked at, because we do such a poor job of policing. We don’t want to build walls, we don’t want to do anything. And if you’re not going to want to do the policing, you’re going to have to start thinking about other alternatives. But it’s not something that I would want to do, but it’s something that certainly has been looked at. And I looked it. If we police properly, we shouldn’t do that."
