LAS VEGAS — Vice President Kamala Harris said Sunday that she would "double" Justice Department resources to crack down on cartels and cut the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., just hours after former President Donald Trump repeated his false claim that she wants to legalize the drug.
"As president, I will double the resources for the Department of Justice to go after those transnational cartels and take action to stop the flow of fentanyl coming into our country, which is destroying entire communities," Harris said in her speech here.
She made similar comments during her trip to the southern border in Arizona on Friday.
At a rally Saturday, Trump also discussed fentanyl, falsely claiming Harris wants to legalize it.
"She's so radical she even wants to legalize fentanyl right away," he told a crowd Saturday in Wisconsin, a claim he repeated Sunday before a crowd in Pennsylvania.
In a 2019 American Civil Liberties Union questionnaire, Harris pointed to "the opioid crisis" as having "reaffirmed the failure of criminalization." She checked a box confirming that she would "support the decriminalization at the federal level of all drug possession for personal use."
"Full decriminalization with appropriate treatment responses could address this stark racial injustice and reduce incarceration," she said. Decriminalization is different from legalization and would keep the drug illegal.
"As President, she will sign the bipartisan border bill that will fund detection technology to intercept even more illicit drugs and she’ll keep fighting to end the opioid epidemic," said a policy section on Harris’ campaign website highlighting how she would handle the fentanyl crisis. A spokesperson for the campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether her view on discrimination of drug possession has changed.
Trump frequently references the topic on the campaign trail, calling for crackdowns on border crossings and giving the death penalty to drug dealers. Though experts have questioned the effectiveness of those policies, anti-fentanyl activists told NBC News in recent interviews that Trump's rhetoric resonates with some family members of opioid victims. One of them, Anne Fundner, spoke at the Republican National Convention in July about her son's death from fentanyl-laced pills.
More than 100,000 people died of drug overdoses last year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data indicated that nearly 70% of the deaths were related to synthetic opioids, mainly fentanyl.
Trump has long argued that a Harris administration would shepherd in chaos at the border, saying at his rally Sunday in Erie, Pennsylvania, that people were “murdered because of her action at the border and thousands more will follow in rapid succession” and calling for her to be “impeached and prosecuted for her actions.”
Harris, who recently tried to confront the political vulnerability head-on by visiting the border, highlighted what has become a frequent refrain when she talks about immigration, pointing to Trump's successful push to crush a bipartisan border deal in Congress in February. She contrasted Trump's vision with her goal to enact "comprehensive immigration reform."
“We must have comprehensive immigration reform with strong border security and an earned pathway to citizenship, including for hard-working immigrants who have been here for years, including our Dreamers,” Harris said.
More than 7,500 people attended the rally, according to the Nevada Democratic Party. Sunday's rally was Harris' second in Nevada since she launched her presidential bid.
Nnamdi Egwuonwu reported from Las Vegas and Megan Lebowitz from Washington.
