logo

Santa Barbara: HIV? No Problem! Plastic Straw? Felony.

image
Author: Jeff Powers
Created: 25 July, 2018
Updated: 21 November, 2022
1 min read

Santa Barbara, CA. - The City of Santa Barbara has passed an ordinance that allows restaurant employees to be punished with up to six months of jail time or a $1,000 fine for giving plastic straws to their customers.

Santa Barbara’s ordinance is certainly the most severe straw ban in the country. Although Seattle banned plastic straws earlier this month, mandating a $250 fine for violators, Santa Barbara has taken it further than Seattle. The city has banned not only plastic straws, but also compostable straws.

And, get this, each individual straw counts as a separate infraction. That means if some poor sod at In-N-Out Burger is the target of an undercover straw sting and hands out straws to a table of four people, that person is facing years behind bars.

Tourists and college students can forget ordering the popular punch bowls at Baja Sharkeez on State Street.

Knowingly Exposing HIV is a Misdemeanor

The straw ban is even more outrageous and confounding if viewed through the state's position on transmitting HIV.

Last October, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill that lowered the crime of knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV without disclosing the infection from a felony to a misdemeanor .

Remarkably, the bill also covers those who give blood without telling the blood bank that they are HIV-positive.
The bill was authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco and Assemblyman Todd Gloria of San Diego.
When the bill was passed, Weiner said, “Today California took a major step toward treating HIV as a public health issue, instead of treating people living with HIV as criminals. HIV should be treated like all other serious infectious diseases, and that’s what SB 239 does.”
UPDATE: Santa Barbara’s plastic-straw ban imposes criminal penalties after the second offense.

Latest articles

votes
Wyoming Purges Nearly 30% of Its Voters from Registration Rolls
It is not uncommon for a state to clean out its voter rolls every couple of years -- especially to r...
27 March, 2024
-
1 min read
ballot box
The Next Big Win in Better Election Reform Could Come Where Voters Least Expect
Idaho isn't a state that gets much attention when people talk about politics in the US. However, this could change in 2024 if Idahoans for Open Primaries and their allies are successful with their proposed initiative....
21 March, 2024
-
3 min read
Courts
Why Do We Accept Partisanship in Judicial Elections?
The AP headline reads, "Ohio primary: Open seat on state supreme court could flip partisan control." This immediately should raise a red flag for voters, and not because of who may benefit but over a question too often ignored....
19 March, 2024
-
9 min read
Nick Troiano
Virtual Discussion: The Primary Solution with Unite America's Nick Troiano
In the latest virtual discussion from Open Primaries, the group's president, John Opdycke, sat down ...
19 March, 2024
-
1 min read
Sinema
Sinema's Exit Could Be Bad News for Democrats -- Here's Why
To many, the 2024 presidential primary has been like the movie Titanic - overly long and ending in a disaster we all saw coming from the start. After months of campaigning and five televised primary debates, Americans are now faced with a rematch between two candidates polling shows a majority of them didn’t want....
19 March, 2024
-
7 min read