Dawn of the plastic straw ban

-Source-National Review- Yes you read that right. The city of Santa Barbara has passed an ordinance that will allow restaurant employees to be punished with up to six months of jail time or a $1000 fine for giving plastic straws to their customers. The bill was passed unanimously last Tuesday and covers bars restaurants and other food-service businesses. Establishments will still be allowed to hand out plastic stirrers but only if customers request them. Santa Barbaras ordinance is likely the most severe straw ban in the country" according to Reason but its far from the only straw ban. Seattle banned plastic straws earlier this month mandating a a $250 fine for violators. Santa Barbara however has gone much further than Seattle even aside from the harsher punishments its law imposes. Santa Barbara has banned not only plastic straws but also compostable straws. Oh and each individual straw counts as a separate infraction meaning that if someone got busted handing out straws to a table of four people he or she could end up facing years behind bars. Now Im a reasonable person. I may be a libertarian but Im glad that we live in a society with laws. For example: I am glad that if a person say murders another person then that murderer has to go to prison. That seems totally fair to me. But six months in jail for handing a little piece of plastic to another person? I feel like youd have to be bananas to think thats even close to fair. This is especially true when you consider just how small an impact these straw bans are going to have on the environment. As Reason notes straws represent only 0.02 percent of the amount of plastic waste that is estimated to go into the ocean each year. Whats more the United States is responsible for only about 1 percent of the total amount of plastic waste thats in the ocean overall. All things considered this new ordinance isnt going to be making a real dent in the problem its intended to solve but it could create some harm. As Reason explains straw bans could end up having a negative impact on disabled people who cannot drink without them.