Tim Walz was announced as the running mate of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on August 6, and took the stage beside Harris at rally in Philadelphia. The two-term governor of Minnesota previously served over a decade in Congress, and is a 24-year National Guard veteran and former high school geography teacher and football coach.
Walz’s selection for the Harris ticket has been welcomed by many progressives on the basis of an extensive legislative record in Minnesota, combined with an approachable, down-to-earth persona. But what has the potential vice president done on drug policy specifically, and in related areas like policing and prisons?
Marijuana is an obvious place to start, when in 2023 Governor Walz signed legislation making Minnesota the 23rd state to fully legalize cannabis.
The bill included several provisions long favored by the marijuana justice community—like automatic expungement for marijuana criminal records, putting the responsibility on government agencies to find and seal eligible records, then notify courts and police to seal their own records.
“Legalizing adult-use cannabis and expunging or resentencing cannabis convictions will strengthen communities.”
“We’ve known for too long that prohibiting the use of cannabis hasn’t worked. By legalizing adult-use cannabis, we’re expanding our economy, creating jobs, and regulating the industry to keep Minnesotans safe,” said Walz at the time. “Legalizing adult-use cannabis and expunging or resentencing cannabis convictions will strengthen communities. This is the right move for Minnesota.”
Legalization in Minnesota also created a “social equity” category to benefit people with past marijuana arrests who want to start a legal business, and a social equity grant fund to invest in communities harmed by decades of cannabis arrests and jail time.
Another important element is that Minnesota prevents cities and towns from banning cannabis businesses in their communities. That prevents the development of “cannabis deserts,” where whole regions shut out cannabis stores, limiting access to cities like Minneapolis or Saint Paul.
With the current vice president having evolved on the issue over the years, Harris-Walz is the first ever pro-marijuana legalization major-party ticket.
Like most states, Minnesota has been hit hard by the overdose crisis. According to CDC data, when Walz took office in January 2019, the state had lost over 600 lives to overdose the year prior. The total has risen steeply during his tenure, culminating in a devastating record high of 1,386 deaths in 2022. That total declined only slightly in 2023.
In 2023, Minnesota became only the second state to authorize overdose prevention centers.
Walz and his party colleagues in the state have taken a number of measures aimed at reducing this toll. Their most eye-catching legislative step came in May 2023, when Minnesota became only the second state (after Rhode Island) to authorize overdose prevention centers (OPC, also known as safe consumption sites).
The bill which Walz signed intructed the Minnesota Commissioner of Human Services to establish “safe recovery sites,” and included $18 million in grants for harm reduction providers to create them. The law makes clear that these would function as OPC, an intervention proven to save lives by providing emergency care and other resources to people using drugs on the premises.
According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune at least one community provider opened such a facility “without a lot of fanfare” in Minneapolis in April.
Leglislation signed by Gov. Walz in 2023 also decriminalized syringes and drug “paraphernalia”—a move that protects harm reduction by ensuring people can get sterile syringes, which prevent disease transmissions, without fear of arrest, including through syringe service programs.
“This is a crisis that has not been talked about enough,” Walz said at a February roundtable about boosting overdose prevention resources. “It’s pretty hard now to not find that it touches our families, our friends, our neighbors across the state.”
Walz and the legislature also reportedly committed a total of $200 million in the 2023 session to “fight the state’s growing substance abuse crisis, with a particular focus on opioid abuse.” Measures include requiring naloxone in schools, jails and police departments; allowing fentanyl test strips to be sold at liquor stores; funding housing for people with substance use disorder; funding for harm reduction, health care and hygiene for people who use drugs; and funding for peer recovery coaches and counselors, especially those working with Black and Indigenous people.
That last emphasis was in recognition of the fact that Black Minnesota residents are three times as likely to die of overdose as white residents, while Indigenous residents are nearly 10 times more likely.
Yet Walz and his party colleagues have simultaneously embraced fentanyl-related criminalization. In 2023, they joined with Republicans to resurrect a bill to increase fentanyl penalties. They raised penalties to equal those for heroin under state drug laws, making it a first-degree controlled substance offense to sell or possess any mixture containing fentanyl. Besides the direct harms of criminalization, such threats make it less likely that people using fentanyl will seek health care and harm reduction resources.
“Shame on them. It’s clearly meant to addict our children,” he said of the vape industry.
Gov. Walz has also been no friend of tobacco harm reduction. He has emphasized a youth vaping “epidemic” narrative without reference to vapes’ harm reduction efficacy for people who smoke, though he was far from alone in wrongly blaming nicotine vapes for the 2019 “EVALI” outbreak.
“Shame on them. It’s clearly meant to addict our children,” he said of the vape industry that year.
He has additionally called for a statewide ban on the vape flavors that many adults switching from cigarettes find important. And he unsuccessfully sought to impose a new tax on vaping products, further reducing the financial incentive to switch in a state that already has the heaviest tax on vapes. Minnesota’s smoking-related deaths have slightly increased in recent years, reaching 6,530 in 2021.
Gov. Walz has implemented certain reforms around prisons and jails in Minnesota. Notably in 2023, he and his party colleagues passed a criminal justice package to reduce the number of people on probation and parole, meaning fewer people should go back to prison. The Justice Action Network estimated, as the Marshall Project reported, that over 5,400 fewer people are on probation in Minnesota because of this. The same package also ended life-without-parole sentences for teenagers, and included a “clean slate” measure to automatically expunge certain convictions after a sentence is completed.
“We must deal with crime and violence in ways that are grounded in data and research, not politics.”
“To keep Minnesota a great place for kids to grow up, we need safe neighborhoods and communities,” Walz said back in 2021, in support of a statewide council to improve outcomes for people on probation and parole. “For that to happen, we must deal with crime and violence in ways that are grounded in data and research, not politics.”
In 2023, Minnesota became the fourth state in the nation to make prison phone calls free for all. That prevents telecom companies from exploiting incarcerated people—and their families—for overpriced telephone calls, and stops corrections agencies taking kickbacks for phone, video calling and e-messaging services. But according to reporting by the Lever, private companies still maintain significant influence—and profits—in the state’s prison system through other means.
Walz’s leadership has also failed to address the growing humanitarian crisis within Minnesota prisons. Earlier in 2024, Twin Cities Pioneer Press reported on horrendous health and sanitation conditions at the state’s oldest prison in Stillwater. Staff reportedly punished people by denying them showers and meals, and the situation has resulted in sit-in protests and lockdowns.
The Walz administration did launch an investigation into the building’s water system and committed to rebuilding it. But the problem goes much deeper. Like other states, Minnesota is facing a worsening shortage of prison staff, while its prison population is increasing. For the staff it does hire, many don’t stay on the job long.
Arguably Walz’s greatest test as a leader came with the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, and the protests against police brutality that followed.
The first issue is how Walz responded to the immediate protests. Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey (D) reportedly asked Walz on the evening of May 27, two days after Floyd’s death, to send in the National Guard; the city police chief also submitted a written request for 600 troops. Walz didn’t agree to the request until the afternoon of May 28, a day of unrest that included the burning of the Third Precinct police station. State and local officials still contest the specifics of the governor’s response, including how many troops were sent in and where they were stationed. The governor took personal responsibility for the arrest of a CNN reporter on live TV.
As Walz’s record is subjected to intense scrutiny, there are still questions about how he handled that situation. Republicans are predictably pursuing the narrative that he “let rioters burn Minneapolis to the ground in 2020,” and “supported BLM rioters.” Progressives and racial justice activists would question the decision to send in the military at all.
The second issue is how Gov. Walz’s administration responded to the underlying policing issues behind Floyd’s death. As the Marshall Project describes, Walz convened a special session of lawmakers to consider immediate legislation to reform policing practices. This resulted in a package of bills, described as “some of the most substantial changes to law enforcement and police accountability in a generation,” including, among other measures: a ban on chokeholds and “warrior style” training, requiring officers to prevent use of excessive force by reporting on and intervening with their colleagues; a statewide investigative unit for police deaths and sexual misconduct; a public police conduct database; and increased accountability for officers through arbitration.
“Right now, we have an opportunity to create safer communities for all Minnesotans by building a public safety system focused on transparency, accountability, and violence prevention,” Walz said when announcing an executive action on police reform in 2021. “These policy changes and increased investments in safety … get us closer to a system of public safety that truly protects all Minnesotans.”
“We must honor George Floyd’s memory here in Minnesota by ensuring all people—particularly in our communities of color—are respected and protected by law enforcement.”
At the same time, rather than defunding the police, Walz and legislators added $3 million in new funds and extended $6 million in annual training funds, according to Courthouse News Service. Many racial justice activists were calling for far more sweeping measures, including defunding and the appointment of independent prosecutors to handle police criminal cases.
Walz did appoint the state attorney general, Keith Ellison, to prosecute Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer who murdered Floyd. The result was Minnesota’s first conviction of a white police officer for the murder of a Black person. Walz’s decision here was important, when you compare it to how Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron handled the killing of Breonna Taylor, where a grand jury was never allowed to indict the officers for homicide.
“George Floyd didn’t ask to be an international symbol of the pain that Black Americans have faced for generations, and yet, in the words of his daughter, he changed the world,” Walz said in 2021 on the anniversary of Floyd’s death. “We must honor George Floyd’s memory here in Minnesota by ensuring all people—particularly in our communities of color—are respected and protected by law enforcement. Let us recommit ourselves to seeking meaningful police reform and working together to make lasting change in Minnesota.”
Gov. Walz and his Minnesota party colleagues have many other highly significant progressive victories to point to. These include establishing a constitutional right to abortion; expanding gun control and background checks; extending voting rights for formerly incarcerated people; guaranteeing free school breakfast and lunch for all K-12 students; passing protections for gender-affirming care, including for people denied it in other states, while banning conversion therapy; protecting union worker rights; implementing environmental protections; and raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
Most of this has happened since Walz’s second term began in 2022—after the state’s Democratic Farmer Labor Party succeeded in flipping control of the state Senate while retaining the House.
“It’s been a tour de force for progressive legislation, particularly in the face of growing conservative extremism in Republican-led states,” wrote Vanity Fair‘s Abigail Tracy of this record in 2023.
Advocates for specific harm reduction, drug policy reform and related justice issues can also find huge encouragement in aspects of Walz’s record—alongside some important areas of disappointment and deep concern.
The balance of his record will bring an enthusiasm boost for many progressives, though there are plenty of debates about how much a VP pick really moves the dial in a presidential election. We may have a better idea once the dust settles in November.
Photograph of Harris and Tim Walz at a rally in Philadelphia on August 6 via the Kamala Harris Facebook page