SOMERSWORTH, New Hampshire — Kamala Harris put pharmaceutical companies on notice Sunday, asserting that they can either exacerbate the opioid addiction crisis or risk a lawsuit from a Harris administration.
The California senator issued the warning during a campaign stop in Somersworth, New Hampshire, her second event as part of a one-day trip to the Granite State. New Hampshire, the host the second nominating contest of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, has one of the highest rates of opioid-related deaths in the country.
“We will agree that no family — no parent, no spouse, no uncle, aunt, no child — should have to, in our America, keep waking up in the middle of the night with heartache, concerned about their family member who has an opioid addiction,” Harris said.
The former attorney general of California, 54, said the problem should be approached “understanding it is a public health epidemic, which requires resources to deal with treatment and deal with support, to deal with supporting grandparents who are helping to raise the children of those who have been touched by this crisis.”
“And also that we will sue those pharmaceutical companies who have pushed this crisis into being,” she added before being drowned out by cheers from the crowd of more than 900 people.
A spokesman for her campaign did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner‘s request for clarification but in 2016, as California’s top law enforcement official, Harris filed a lawsuit against Indivior, a British pharmaceutical company, and MonoSolRX, an Indiana pharmaceutical film technology company, for inflating opioid addiction treatment prices.
The freshman senator on Sunday also foreshadowed the release of a plan regarding drug pricing this week.
“The pharmaceutical companies have been jacking up prices hand over fist, year after year, and we have got to control that. And we have to control that in a way that recognizes … that their business model, it seems, is truly about profit and not about public health,” she said. “It’s inhumane to deprive people of the medication that exists that can relieve severe pain or improve quality of life.”
Separately, Harris on Sunday committed to choosing a gender-balanced Cabinet should she win her party’s nomination and the White House next year.
“Yes, and I will also tell you that, to your point, one of the issues that I alluded to earlier. It’s not about the cabinet but it’s certainly a gender parity issue, and that’s about equal pay,” she said before explaining her proposal, which would fine companies that have different salaries for men and women doing the same work.
