As a politician, Schill managed to get considerable media attention with his radical positions; among other things, he spoke out for the legalization of cannabis, demanded that sex offenders who did not respond to therapy be castrated, and stated that parents who failed to bring up their children "the right way" should be jailed. Furthermore, following the Moscow theater hostage crisis in October 2002, where 129 of 800 hostages were killed by an unknown chemical agent employed by the authorities to incapacitate the hostage-takers, he proposed that similar gas should also be used by German police to fight terrorism.