In a world where straw waste causes mass hysteria by clogging the brains of high-in-the-sky Californians, one man will save the Golden State. Democratic leader Ian Calderon has a few laws to cook up over a cauldron of piety and self-appreciation (Stats Show California Now Has the Highest Poverty Rate in America… and PANIC: California Democrats Worry New Taxes ‘Might’ Cause Mass Exodus).

California has proposed a bill in which waitstaff can face months of prison time and abhorrent fines for giving customers a straw. Yes, one of those bendy, plastic tube things.

[Ian] Calderon, the Democratic majority leader in California's lower house, has introduced a bill to stop sit-down restaurants from offering customers straws with their beverages unless they specifically request one. Under Calderon's law, a waiter who serves a drink with an unrequested straw in it would face up to 6 months in jail and a fine of up to $1,000.

The actual number of straws being used is unclear. Calderon, along with news outlets writing about this issue—from CNN to the San Francisco Chronicle—unfailingly state that Americans use 500 million plastic straws a day, many of them ending up in waterways and oceans.

That's an inaccurate number of straws. No excuse for such level of suck. The straw figure itself comes from a thing called Eco-Cycle.

Eco-Cycle is unable to provide any data to back up this number, telling Reason that it was relying on the research of one Milo Cress. Cress—whose Be Straw Free Campaign is hosted on Eco-Cycle's website—tells Reason that he arrived at the 500 million straws a day figure from phone surveys he conducted of straw manufacturers in 2011, when he was just 9 years old.

Statistics sourced from the phone banking of a 9-year-old. Huh.

...Straws collected by the California Costal Commission during its annual Coastal Cleanup Day: a total of 835,425 straws and stirrers since 1988, or about 4.1 percent of debris collected.

Calderon wants to use his witchery to cast a spell of dissent upon the whole restaurant industry. There will be an epidemic of ice-face spilling. Sipping questionably "cleaned" glasses. Fun.

The government has no place telling private establishments they can't give customers flimsy plastic tunnels. Its a violation of industrial and personal freedom (see GAYSTAPO STRIKES: Colorado Baker Ordered to ‘Bake Gay Wedding Cakes. Or None At All.’). Especially when the straw bill is based on sucky figures.

By the way, climate change alarmists call us the crazy ones. Now they're trying to imprison servers for handing out unsolicited straws. You do the math.

Speaking of skewed information, let's take a look at some other leftist myths:

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