Paper straws may seem a picayune issue for President Donald Trump to take on in his first month in office amid a migrant crisis, stubborn inflation, and multiple international conflagrations.
Doesn’t Trump have something more important to attend to?
It’s a fair question. But we have a prior question: Were not paper straws a picayune issue for then-President Joe Biden to take on in 2021 amid a migrant crisis, raging inflation, and multiple international conflagrations?
Didn’t Biden have something more important to attend to?
This isn’t mere “whataboutism.” Our argument isn’t that Trump is justified in dwelling on the petty because Biden also dwelt on the petty. Our argument is this: Anything profound enough to regulate or mandate is surely profound enough to deregulate and unmandate.
We addressed this same philosophical question in Trump’s first term when he took flak for repealing former President Barack Obama’s showerhead regulations. “If the flow of a person’s shower head is too petty to be deregulated, then how was it momentous enough to be regulated in the first place?”
Biden’s straw rule is not quite a petty tyranny like Obama’s shower control. Yes, Biden campaigned against plastic straws, declaring, “I don’t think we should be using plastic straws anymore in restaurants,” as part of his effort to “eliminate the use of plastic.”
But in the end, Biden didn’t try to bar you or your local pub from buying or using real straws. Instead, his administration ordered the elimination of all single-use plastics, including straws, from all federal properties.
Thus Biden’s paper straw policy is best understood as an utterly senseless rule that reflects stupid governance and makes people’s lives very slightly worse.
The crusade against plastic straws began last decade with a myth. The myth was that the country was throwing out half a billion plastic straws in the trash and harming all sorts of aquatic animals, like sharks and turtles.
First, that 500,000,000 number was made up — by a 9-year-old boy.
Also, it turns out that almost none of the plastic in our oceans comes from the United States; almost all of it flows into the ocean from rivers in Asia. The 10 largest sources of ocean plastic are all in the Philippines, India, and Malaysia, according to the latest estimates. Asia accounts for 81% of ocean plastic, and the U.S. contributes less than one-quarter of 1% of this trash while having more than 4% of the global population.
(This is a very inconvenient fact for the Left, for whom it is creedal that the wealthiest countries, and especially the U.S., are the biggest polluters.)
It gets worse. Paper straws often contain toxic chemicals that may harm humans, Trump pointed out.
Paper straws are also much more expensive than plastic straws, and so Biden’s rule wasted taxpayer money for absolutely no gain.
And of course, paper straws are truly unpleasant to use. They dissolve into your drink if you don’t slurp it all up in a hurry like a sorority girl trying to get drunk off a Long Island iced tea.
Trump has not merely the right to repeal his predecessors’ petty tyrannies and senseless rules. He actually has a duty to do so.
Bad governance and petty tyranny grow like mold. Constant maintenance is required to keep our democracy healthy.
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Much of this work will be done quietly by low-level Trump hires. But the straw rule was so pointless that it warranted an executive order. In fact, Trump should go further.
The White House and other federal agencies likely have stockpiles of paper Biden straws lying around. Trump should gather them onto the South Lawn, stack them high, and have a bonfire to celebrate this return to common sense.
