Maine Gov. Paul LePage said on Tuesday that penalties for drug traffickers are not harsh enough, suggesting that the state should reinstate the death penalty and bring back the guillotine so there could be public executions of serious offenders.
The Republican governor, known for his colorful and controversial statements, made the comment during his weekly interview on Maine radio station WVOM when asked about a push for harsher penalties for those who traffic drugs into the state.
"I think the death penalty should be appropriate for people who kill Mainers," LePage said, arguing that legislative proposals to increase prison sentences for drug traffickers do not do enough. "We should give them an injection of the stuff they sell."
LePage decried critics, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, who he accused of protecting drug traffickers.
"What we ought to do is bring the guillotine back," he said, interrupting the hosts as they tried to wrap-up the interview, according to CNN. "We could have public executions and we could even have which hole it falls in."
This isn't the first time LePage has made comments that have fallen under mass scrutiny. Earlier this month, the Maine governor came under fire after he made a controversial comment about drug dealers impregnating white women.
"With the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty - these types of guys - they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home," LePage said at a town hall event, according to the Talking Points Memo. "Half the time they impregnate a young white girl before they leave."
He has since apologized for his comments, arguing that his use of the term "white girls" was a slip of the tongue, and blamed local media for intentionally blowing his words out of proportion while ignoring the state's ongoing drug epidemic.
