Kamala Harris' Flip-Flop on Plastic Straw Bans Marks the End of America's Dumbest Moral Panic

Kamala Harris

Christian Britschgi | 9.6.2024 1:20 PM

When they needed her most, presidential candidate Kamala Harris wanted to ban plastic straws. Now that the mania about banning plastic straws has subsided, she says they can remain a legal product.

An unnamed campaign staffer told Axios reporter Alex Thompson yesterday that Harris, contra a 2019 statement, no longer supports banning plastic straws. Even when she did, the staffer told Thompson, "she joked even then about how crappy paper straws are and the need to come up with better eco-friendly alternatives."

Indeed, she did.

During her brief presidential run in 2019, Harris described the unpleasantness of using a paper straw to CNN's Erin Burnett in graphic detail, saying "If you don't gulp it down immediately it starts to bend and then, you know, [awkward laughter] the little thing catches it."

Nevertheless, Harris told Burnett in the same interview that she supported banning superior plastic alternatives.

Hard as it is to believe here in 2024, plastic straw bans were briefly the hot policy sweeping the nation.

A number of big, blue cities prohibited restaurants and bars from giving plastic straws to their customers. Harris' old stomping ground of San Francisco went even further by banning all businesses from distributing not just plastic straws, but also plastic cocktail swords, stirrer sticks, and other single-use plastic items.

Other cities and states adopted "straw on request" laws that required customers to ask for a straw before they could be given one.

The straw panic, as Reason first reported in 2018, was kicked off by the research of then-9-year-old Milo Cress, who created the viral statistic that Americans use 500 million straws a day. More credible estimates from market analysts put the country's straw usage at less than half that.

The straw bans that Cress' work inspired (but which he did not endorse) never made much sense as a policy.

As best we can tell, straws make up a tiny fraction of America's plastic waste, which in turn makes up a tiny share of global plastic waste. Banning them reduced consumer convenience and personal freedom, but produced no actual environmental benefit.

People's frustration with paper alternatives to plastic straws eventually saw support for straw bans subside. By 2020, the policy had become synonymous with liberal overreach. Conservatives and freedom-lovers rallied behind plastic straw use.

The Trump campaign even started selling Trump-branded plastic straws and singled out Harris' support for straw bans in attack ads.

It's little wonder then that Harris' campaign handlers are reversing her past support for plastic straw bans.

As Reason's Liz Wolfe noted this morning, this is just the latest of Harris's many flip-flops on everything from Medicare For All to fracking.

Some might argue straw bans are a lot less consequential than Harris' other policy switcheroos, and they'd be wrong about that.

Even if they were correct, Harris' history with plastic straw bans is a useful window into her evolution as a candidate.

In 2019, she reflexively supported whatever liberal policy was put in front of her, even when her own instincts told her it was a bad idea. In 2024, Harris is doing her level best to take no policy positions (beyond a consistent endorsement of price controls and abortion) and leaning heavily on anonymous campaign staffers to memory hole all her past positions.

It's always bad form to yell at politicians when they are agreeing with you. I'm obligated to say that Harris coming around on plastic straws is a welcome change. It's evidence that, in at least this small way, America has become a little saner.

Still, the fact that we never hear from the candidate herself about why she's changed her mind makes one wonder where Harris' heart really is, and what her position tomorrow will be.