Maine Governor Lepage Quotes

In a real sense, the new “get tough on opioids” policies have been fueled by the mistaken perception that most illegal opioid dealers are black or Latino. Consider the remarks made by then Maine governor Paul LePage at a town hall forum in 2016. The governor reassured attendees that his beef was not with Mainers who merely “take drugs.” Bear in mind that Maine is the whitest state in the union. His outrage, LePage said, was aimed squarely at out-of-state drug dealers: “Guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty . . . they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home.” But, LePage warned, before these packs of mythical drug pushers head home, they usually “impregnate a young white girl.”24

Maine is the state with the whitest and oldest population in the country, whose children are the least likely in the country to have a classmate of color. The state ranks among the top ten in opioid deaths. From 2011 to 2019, the state’s governor, Paul LePage, campaigned and governed on rhetoric about illegal immigrants on welfare and drug-dealing people of color.