If ever an inanimate object required some serious PR help, it is the plastic straw. Over the past year or so the humble, skinny, plastic tube has been held up as the symbol of all that is wrong with the world – the very embodiment of evil, perched in a soda glass.

The concern, of course, is that its imperishable composition, coupled with its inherent disposability, is offensive to nature. Since word leaked out that plastic straws were likely presenting some ecological challenges – a cringe-inducing (and rather heart-wrenching) video of an unfortunate sea turtle who had somehow managed to get one shoved up his nostril a few years back sort of got the ball rolling – the elimination of the things has become something of a cause célèbre. The trendiest companies and mayors are now tripping over one another to prohibit their use. They have actually, in some circles, become less politically popular than the cocaine they are used on occasion to help ingest.

The open question is whether bans of plastic straws will accomplish anything worthwhile, and the answers are unsatisfying. It turns out that plastic straws constitute only about 0.02 percent of the plastic staining our oceans; and that the United States contributes only something on the order of one percent of the total oceanic plastic waste.

Still, symbolism has its place, and nowhere as ostentatiously as in politics. Besides, focusing vengeance on straws is easy; there is nothing that Denver, or San Francisco, or Starbucks can do about the millions of tons of industrial plastic the Chinese dump overboard each year, but, by God, they can take on the pernicious straw!

Not to be left outside the fray, the Colorado Legislature is considering bi-partisan legislation to take on the issue. The bill would prohibit restaurants from handing out plastic straws unless one is requested. Drive-through windows and self-serve straw dispensers are exempted.

Now, on the surface this smacks of the sort of nanny-stateism that we are growing all too accustomed to; but it is actually a rather elegant proposal, given the political climate. One of the more pointed criticisms of plastic straw prohibitions is the imposition they place on the disabled, many of whom for which a straw is the only viable means of ingesting fluid. This bill handles that concern deftly.

It is also considerably better than the alternatives, dutifully offered by the more fanatical elements of our society. The bill establishes the same standard statewide, rather than a) banning plastic straws outright or b) permitting any of our hundreds of local jurisdictions from conjuring up their own regulatory permutations, up to and including banning plastic straws outright.

There is something to be said for the proposition that decisions ought to be made at the lowest feasible levels; a position so defensible it happens to be my own. But the key word is “feasible.” How feasible is it for a restaurant with locations in five towns over three counties to have to adjust its straw-management practices in accommodation to each locality’s sensibilities? As to the argument that the restaurant in question ought to simply adopt the practices of the harshest jurisdiction, does that not invalidate the popular sentiment of customers in the less stringent ones? And how, then, does the restaurant reconcile the question of the disabled patron or the as-yet-not-fully-coordinated child wishing for a plastic straw?

There is an undercurrent to all this which gets the libertarian enzymes worked up, wondering how, exactly, this is a problem for the government to solve – especially considering that so many businesses are electing, without the prodding of government, to do away with straws of their own accord. Should we not simply let restaurant patrons reward those establishments whose concern for artificially congested turtles mirrors their own?

At the present time, given the present political situation in Colorado, that scenario is merely an interesting thought experiment. For the time being, the new normal seems to align with settling for legislation that addresses a perceived need with at least a lighter, more reasonable touch, rather than going as far as some places, like California, and making it a punishable criminal offense to give a child a plastic straw with their milkshake.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and recovering journalist based in Denver. He is also an energy and environmental policy fellow at Centennial Institute.