Crime novelist Don Winslow takes out ad assailing Trump

NEW YORK – A leading crime novelist has a few words, and then some, for the Trump administration’s plans for a new war on drugs.

“The Cartel” author Don Winslow is taking out a full-page ad in Sunday’s New York Times that calls President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions “woefully ignorant” about the causes of drugs and crime and about how to combat them. The ad shows a tweet from Winslow to Trump on top and an essay below.

Winslow has written often and sometimes prophetically about the drug wars. “The Cartel” was published in 2015 and featured a prison escape by a drug lord based on Mexico’s El Chapo. Shortly after the book came out the real El Chapo escaped, but he was recaptured.

Sessions wants a return to the era of long prison terms for drug crimes.