During Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate, Amy Klobuchar (D-WI) told debate moderator Marc Lacey that opioid manufacturers should be held responsible for the opioid epidemic.
“The people that should pay for this, that should pay for the treatment, are the very people that got people hooked and killed them in the first place, and that is the people that are manufacturing these opioids,” said Klobuchar.
Former Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke (D-TX) agreed with Klobuchar, stating that the opioid crisis would continue “until we hold those responsible accountable.”
But when Lacey asked Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA) about what she would do about the opioid crisis, Harris declared that drug company executives should be sent to jail, calling it a “matter of justice.”
LACEY: Senator Harris, you want to hold the drug manufacturers that fueled the crisis accountable. Are you in favor of sending those drug company executives to jail?
HARRIS: I am. And I will tell you, as a former prosecutor, I do think of it as being a matter of justice and accountability because they are nothing more than some high-level dope dealers. They have been engaged —
*Applause.*
HARRIS: And I’ve seen it happen before. I’ve taken on the pharmaceutical companies when I was attorney general of California and led the second largest department of justice. I’ve seen what they do. The biggest pharmaceutical companies, the eight biggest companies and insurance companies last year profited $72 billion on the backs of people like the families that we are talking about, that have been overwhelmed by this crisis, which is a public health epidemic.
And they knew what they were doing, they were marketing false advertising, they knew what they were pushing in communities in states like Ohio, without any concern about the repercussions because they were profiting and making big bucks. And yes, they should be held accountable, this is a matter of justice.
And so as president of the United States, I would ensure that the United States Department of Justice understands that you want to deal with who is really a criminal? Let’s end mass incarceration and end that failed war on drugs, and let’s go after these pharmaceutical companies for what they’ve been doing to destroy our country in states like Ohio.
Harris has previously been criticized for her failure to promote “justice” as Attorney General of California.
On Monday, Bloomberg published a report showing that Kamala Harris’s office refused to pay a man who was wrongfully convicted of rape, and even tried to force him into joining the sex offender registry list. Gerald Schwartzbach, the man’s lawyer, told Bloomberg that Harris’ office “penalized an innocent man with technical arguments,” which he calls “contradictory to the whole purpose of the criminal justice system.”
Last August, as the Daily Wire reported, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) became the most-searched Democratic presidential candidate on Google after she brought attention to Harris’ problematic record as a prosecutor.
GABBARD: I want to bring the conversation back to the broken criminal justice system that is disproportionately negatively impacting black and brown people all across this country today. Now Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president.
But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.
She blocked evidence — she blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California.