Reducing the use of drinking straws will be a tough sell

THERE’S a bill pending in the California legislature that would subject waiters to fines and imprisonment for giving diners plastic drinking straws without being asked. This legislation has no chance to pass — I think — but critics are having a lot of fun with it anyway. Held up to particular ridicule has been the claim that the US consumes 500 million plastic straws a day, a figure that the news media have often cited. This data point, which would mean that Americans use something on the order of 182 billion straws a year, comes from a science project created by a 9-year-old boy in 2011. Thus the ridicule.

Okay, fair enough. Still, we do use a lot of them. And one cannot help but wonder how the straw became so ubiquitous. As it turns out, that took a lot of marketing. No one seems to have written a social history of the drinking straw. That’s too bad, because the social history turns out to be interesting.

Although archaeologists tell us that the use of straws has ancient roots, the “modern” paper drinking straw (predecessor to today’s plastic straws) seems to have been first produced in 1888.

The invention quickly became popular, in part through the corner store. In the early 1900s, druggists who ran soda fountains were being advised to provide straws to their customers, who might otherwise wind up with a mouthful of foam from their confections. Some pharmacists warned, however, that it was unsanitary to leave straws (or “sticks” as they were often called) in a container that customers could reach. Far better to hand them out individually.

Although early on some purists considered the use of this new technology slovenly, the straw’s rapid adoption was assisted by the explosive growth in the popularity of Coca-Cola following the introduction of a bottled version of the soft drink at the turn of the century.

In 1921, the humorist Ring Lardner suggested drinking straws as a second-anniversary gift for married couples: “The husband will appreciate an individual drinking straw that can be carried in a case as it often happens that 2 men goes out to the ball games and orders pop, the salesman is libel [sic] to give them 2 bottles and 1 straw with the remark that this is the last straw.”

By that time the drinking straw was a hit.

According to a widely reprinted 1924 story, the US produced about 4 billion straws that year — up from 165 million in 1901. They were manufactured mostly by small local businesses, but some people began to clamor that the industry was big enough to be regulated.

Sure enough, during the Depression, the National Recovery Administration imposed upon the drinking straw industry a “code of fair competition” that ran to 26 pages.

Included were such gems as the recommendation that the industry establish “plans to equalize production with demand.” Most of the rules were mandatory. The NRA created a mechanism for fixing prices, and set minimum wages for workers in the industry. (Compared to men who did the same work, the federal government decreed, women were to earn 87.5 cents on the dollar.)

By the 1940s, straws were so common that swigging directly from the bottle had come to be considered bad manners — at least when the swigger was female. Advice columnists urged readers to remind their daughters that Lana Turner had been discovered while sipping through a straw.

One anonymous writer counseled young women that using a straw was an excellent way to “look appealing.” Newspapers trumpeted claims that US soldiers and sailors overseas considered young women who drank through straws more attractive than those who didn’t. In short, the hard-sell was on, and its target was women. Then there was hygiene. Doctors, evidently prompted by the manufacturers, suggested using straws to avoid cold and flu germs. Typical was a 1945 article in the San Bernardino County Sun: “A drinking straw prevents the mouth and lips from touching the rim of the glass where most of these germs colonize.”

By the 1950s, the drinking straw was everywhere.

Popular books told schoolchildren how straws could be key components in experiments like building a barometer or an electrophorus. Periodicals for teachers carried tips on how to turn drinking straws into Christmas decorations for their classrooms. The nation’s housewives were advised to find applications around the kitchen. Petunia, a widely published cartoon character who presented homemaking ideas, suggesting inserting pieces of a straw into pies before baking, to “keep the juice from oozing out.” Dear Polly, an advice columnist, recommended drinking straws to keep ketchup flowing from the bottle.

The heavy effort to associate straws with women and children would have unintended consequences.

For some, straws became associated with a lack of manliness.

In the 1980s, “Mortified in Minneapolis” complained to Dear Abby that her “otherwise masculine” husband sipped through a straw in public. Abby told Mortified that her husband’s masculinity was not at stake, and readers wrote in to agree.

And speaking of the 1980s, we mustn’t leave that decade without a mention of drinking straws and politics.

In 1984, the General Cinema Corp. allowed customers who bought soft drinks at its theaters to choose between straws marked with the names of the presidential contenders. Ronald Reagan won the “straw poll” by a landslide, defeating Walter Mondale by 61.5% to 38.5%. This wasn’t far off the actual election result, where Reagan beat Mondale by 58.8 to 40.6. So if we get rid of drinking straws, we’ll be forced to rely on the same “expert” surveys that whiffed so badly last time around.

So, please, California, just this once‚ lay off.