Harris Opposes Plastic Straw Bans, Campaign Says

Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris speaks on the fourth and last day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC) at the United Center in Chicago on Aug. 22, 2024. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, no longer supports a ban on plastic straws, according to her campaign.

A campaign official told Axios that Harris “doesn’t support banning plastic straws” and finds paper ones to be inadequate.

The official added that Harris will be highly focused on climate-related efforts if she wins the race for the White House, including encouraging the development of “better eco-friendly alternatives” to single-use plastic straws than paper ones.

The development marks a shift for Harris, who in a 2019 CNN town hall on the “climate crisis” said that the United States needs to ban plastic straws, while acknowledging that paper ones aren’t up to the job.

“I think we should, yes,” Harris said when asked about banning plastic straws. “Look, I’m going to be honest: It’s really difficult out of drink out of a paper straw—like, if you don’t gulp it down immediately, it starts to bend, and then the little thing catches it. So, we gotta kind of perfect that one a little bit more.”

Harris added at the time that encouraging innovation is key to finding better alternatives to plastic.

A request sent to the Harris campaign for clarification of the reason for the policy shift was not returned.

A message that accompanied the advertisement of Trump-branded plastic straws for sale on his official presidential campaign website back in 2019 read: “Liberal paper straws don’t work. Stand with President Trump and buy your recyclable straws today.”

Jason Miller, an adviser to the Trump campaign, used plastic straw bans to illustrate his point when criticizing Harris’s record and policy positions in an interview on NBC in July.

“Kamala Harris had a long, liberal, radical record in California well before she even became vice president; I mean, heck, she wants to get rid of plastic straws,” he said at the time.

Calls to ban plastic straws have seen mixed success in the United States, with several major cities and states enacting partial bans. While straws represent only a small fraction of plastic waste, the bans have been a symbolic step in broader efforts to reduce single-use plastics.

Advocates of alternatives to single-use plastic are now shifting their focus to more comprehensive plastic waste reduction measures, including packaging reforms and better recycling systems.

When asked in 2019 whether he supports plastic straw bans in 2019, Trump said that he had “bigger problems” to deal with and pointed to the minimal impact straw waste has compared to other plastic waste.

“So, you have a little straw, but what about the plates, the wrappers, and everything else that are much bigger and they’re made of the same material?” he told reporters at the time. “Everybody focuses on the straws. There’s a lot of other things to focus on.”