City of Santa Monica Wants to Boil You in Hot Coffee

If you want to avoid getting hot coffee spilled on you in Santa Monica, you're out of luck. Thanks to our current city council, single-use plastics used in the food and beverage industry were banned city-wide in 2018. It does not matter to our city council if such products provide safety for consumers.

Even the plastic stoppers used to prevent coffee from spilling as you walk it away from Starbucks are banned. The company will no longer ship them to Santa Monica locations. And, since you can't drink your coffee at Starbucks any more (or anywhere else), you are doomed to walk or drive away from a Santa Monica coffee shop with a good chance of getting hot liquid spilled on your car seats, your child, or you.

This is one, among many, reasons to vote out our city council. The ban on safety measures just because they are plastic is emblematic of the way our council thinks. The importance of signalling their virtue to the globe (they truly believe the globe is watching them - I'm not kidding) trumps actual needs and consequences to and on their constituents. That small plastic plug is not going to change the course of global warming or ocean pollution. But it might cause a burn that could scar, disfigure, or even kill a resident of Santa Monica.

They have no common sense. No consideration of unintended consequences. And none of them should get your vote.