Washington Post Urges Shopping Deaths

The Washington Post has an editorial urging that Maryland adopt a tax on plastic grocery bags, much like San Francisco's to "encourage" people to use reusable bags rather than the flimsy plastic grocery bags provided "free" by the grocery stores:

Since San Francisco first moved in 2007 to staunch the deluge of non-biodegradable shopping bags that harm wildlife and litter streets, waterways and sewers, other jurisdictions have followed suit, including the District, three years ago, and Montgomery County, last year. As the use of 5-cent bag taxes and similar measures have spread, Americans have learned two lessons: The measures are effective at cutting litter and popularizing the reuse of bags; and industry arguments against such measures are nonsense.

That has raised hopes in Maryland of enacting the country’s first statewide bag tax this year. (Hawaii has a de facto ban, since each of its four counties prohibits the use of carryout plastic bags at checkout counters.) Predictably, plastic-bag manufacturers are again hoping to kill or subvert legislation that would benefit the environment.

Of course, one thing the Washington Post fails to mention is the uptick in disease and preventable deaths that occurred in San Francisco when people use contaminated reusable bags:

San Francisco passed America's "first-in-the-nation" ban on plastic bags in chain grocery stores and drugstores in 2007. In a research paper for the Wharton School Institute for Law and Economics, law professors Jonathan Klick and Joshua Wright crunched state and federal data on emergency room admissions and food-borne-illness deaths and figured that the San Francisco ban "led to an increase in infections immediately upon implementation."

They found a 46 percent rise in food-borne-illness deaths. The bottom line: "Our results suggest that the San Francisco ban led to, conservatively, 5.4 annual additional deaths."

If it only saves one life, we must prevent the bag ban!

Now, I'm not so much against reusable bags as I am pro-bag freedom. If you wish to risk your life and health to help save the Bay, feel free, but please do not coerce me to accept unsafe practices.