President Orders A Federal 'National Strategy To End The Use Of Paper Straws'

In February, the president signed an executive order directing the full weight of the federal government against the paper straw — including the commissioning of an official “National Strategy to End the Use of Paper Straws.”

The order, EO 14208, requires federal agencies to stop buying paper straws and tasks the White House with producing, within 45 days, a national strategy for the elimination of a straw. A “national strategy” is a document normally reserved for pandemics, wars, and cyber threats. It now also exists for a beverage accessory. The order reverses a Biden-era plan to phase single-use plastics out of federal operations by 2035.

Asked to make the case, the president made it directly. “These things don’t work,” he said of paper straws. “On occasion, they break, they explode.” A straw. That explodes.

Whatever one thinks of paper straws — and they are, admittedly, not great — it remains the only known instance of a global superpower drafting a formal national strategy against a tube.