“I’ve been consistent my whole career. My career has been based on an understanding, one, that my duty as a prosecutor was to seek and make sure that the most vulnerable and voiceless among us are protected, and that is why I have personally prosecuted violent crime that includes rape, child molestation, and homicide. And, I have also worked my entire career to reform the criminal justice system, understanding, to your point, that it is deeply flawed and in need of repair, which is why, as attorney general for example, I led the Department of Justice, which is the largest state department of justice in any state, in California and implemented the first of its kind in the nation, implicit bias and procedural justice training for police officers. It is why I created the first in the nation for any department of justice an open data initiative that we named “Open Justice” for the first time making transparent and showing the public statistics around deaths in custody, arrest rates by race, and making that information available to the public. I instituted a policy around requiring the agents who worked in my division, which is the first of its kind for a state agency, to wear body cameras. I created an initiative back when I was DA, and this was when, by the way, this was the 90’s and the early 2000’s, where you could talk to DAs around the country and you’d mention the word re-entry, and they didn’t know what you were talking about. This was when there was a “tough-on-crime” mentality, and I created one of the first in the nation initiatives that was focused on re-entering former offenders by getting them jobs, and training, and counseling, and it ended up being something that, thankfully, in these ensuing 15 years, is something that is regularly talked about by district attorneys, but back when we created this, that was not happening. On the issue of the death penalty, I am personally opposed to the death penalty. I’ve always been opposed to the death penalty, and that’s not gonna change.”

Town Hall with Senator Kamala Harris
CNN, January 28, 2019

“Ensuring that PrEP, as well as the required tests and follow-up visits, are covered cost-free as part of all insurance plans (including Medicare and Medicaid) will help make sure everyone who could benefit from the medication is able to take it and help increase awareness about steps we can take to prevent further transmissions.”
BREAKING: 2020 Presidential Candidates Tell Us Their Plans to End HIV
HIV+Magazine, September 9, 2019 | Jacob Anderson-Minshall

“We right now have got a lot of work to do with the people in our country who have served their time and have been prohibited from voting… Currently in our country there are 6 million people who have served their time and are still prohibited from voting, and that has been an area of focus for me for quite some time, and we’ve got to address that and address that immediately, and so that is one of my first areas of focus and concern… Do I think that people who commit murder, people who are terrorists, should be deprived of their rights? Yeah, I do. I’m a prosecutor, I believe that in terms of, there has to be serious consequence for the most extreme types of crimes.”
Harris on whether felons should vote in prison: ‘There has to be serious consequences’ for extreme crimes
CNN.com, April 23, 2019 | Kate Sullivan

“We must take action to increase access to get a wide range of services in our communities, including naloxone to prevent overdoses and other treatments to help people in the many stages of their recovery. I am a cosponsor of the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act which would provide state and local governments with $100 billion in federal funding over the next ten years to deploy those kinds of resources.”
Kamala Harris Clarifies Her HIV Policy Positions
HIV+Magazine, September 9, 2019
Jacob Anderson-Minshall

“In 2017, the administration declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency, but the fund they used to deal with it had only — I kid you not — $57,000 in it. That represents less than one dollar for each person who died of a drug overdose that year. It’s unconscionable… We need to make sure that people who are addicted have access to medication-assisted-treatment (MAT) — drugs like buprenorphine which prevents withdrawal symptoms and cravings without producing the kind of high that heroin or OxyContin does. Many insurance companies will cover the cost of opioids while charging more than $200 a month for buprenorphine. That has to change. We have to change it.”
(The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris, pp. 206-207, Jan 8 2019)

The Opioid Crisis Requires Emergency Mobilization
The Truths We Hold pp. 206-207, January 8, 2019 | Kamala Harris

“Times have changed — marijuana should not be a crime. We need to start regulating marijuana, and expunge marijuana convictions from the records of millions of Americans so they can get on with their lives. As marijuana becomes legal across the country, we must make sure everyone — especially communities of color that have been disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs — has a real opportunity to participate in this growing industry.”
Harris, Nadler Introduce Comprehensive Marijuana Reform Legislation
U.S. Senate website for Kamala Harris, July 23, 2019

“We must take action to increase access to get a wide range of services in our communities, including naloxone to prevent overdoses and other treatments to help people in the many stages of their recovery. I am a cosponsor of the Comprehensive Addiction Resources Emergency (CARE) Act which would provide state and local governments with $100 billion in federal funding over the next ten years to deploy those kinds of resources. “

Kamala Harris Clarifies Her HIV Policy Positions
HIV+Magazine, September 9, 2019 | Jacob Anderson-Minshall

From a 2018 letter to United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, sent by 17 senators: “No police officer, no firefighter, no public health provider, and no person should be unable to save a life because of the high price,” the lawmakers wrote.“By bringing down the cost, we can get this life-saving drug in the hands of more people as called for by the Surgeon General. Doing so will save countless lives.”
Klobuchar, Smith, Senators Call on Administration to Take Immediate Action to Reduce Price of Naloxone, a Life-Saving Opioid Overdose Reversal Drug
Klobuchar Senate Website, April 30, 2018