The War on Drinking Straws Continues

An actual benefit of envirototalitarianism has been discovered. It has provided Zach Rybarczyk with a job. From Washington, DC, where drinking straws were patented in 1888:

Warning letters in hand, Zach Rybarczyk patrolled the food court at Union Station, looking for offenders. …

At Lotus Express, a Chinese food joint, Rybarczyk peeled the wrapper from a red straw and bent the end – the telltale giveaway.

Plastic.

Washington has become the latest city in a nationwide movement to ban plastic straws, and it’s up to Rybarczyk, an inspector for the D.C. Department of Energy and Environment, to enforce the new law.

The straw cop left the rattled cashier at Lotus Express with a warning that if the store was still using plastic straws by July, when a grace period expires, it could be fined up to $800.

Rybarczyk is virtuous. He “keeps a metal straw for his personal use in his backpack.”

Plastic straws are bad because a 9-year-old child absurdly claimed that Americans use 500 million straws per day, and virtue signaling Hollyweirdos ran with it:

Local legislatures soon caught up, even threatening straw providers with jail time in Santa Barbara.

Back in DC, a customer who wisely declined to give his name grouses,

“What, is this California now?”

Not yet, but the whole country is getting there. Here’s what that means:

The entire state of California is moving toward the criminalization of providing drinking straws.

Straws represent an insignificant percentage of litter…

But environmentalists say straw bans can raise awareness about the bigger plastic pollution problem.

“Soon, it will be Our Last Plastic Fork,” [DC antistraw activist Dan] Simons said. “It’s really an item-by-item, single-use plastic reduction and replacement strategy.”

They call themselves progressives because the approach is incremental. If they tried to impose their agenda all at once, people would rebel.

After straws and plastic forks are gone, they will proclaim napkins to be offensive to the environment, and we will be left smearing our greasy fingers on our trousers. Then it will be something else.

On a tip from Lyle.

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