Brooklyn-based columnist David Klion has drawn national attention with a recent tweet storm arguing that driving is immoral and automobiles should be banned.

Nanny-state proposals from Acela corridor opinion writers like this are easy to dismiss and, in Klion’s case, mock. Yet the real danger is that too many politicians in state capitals and city halls nationwide spend an inordinate amount of time pondering things to ban and, unlike busybody columnists, their bad ideas can be put into law, with negative consequences for individuals, families, and the economy in general.

The California legislature, more so than any other elected body in the country, is filled with lawmakers who live to manage other people’s lives and dictate seemingly innocuous personal decisions and behavior. That’s why California is one of only two states that has banned plastic shopping bags and imposes a 10-cent tax on paper bags (with the revenue collected going not to state coffers or environmental improvement projects, but to line the pockets of large corporations like Safeway and Ralph’s).

Before state lawmakers banned plastic bags, cities and towns across the Golden State had begun enacting their own bag bans and taxes. That patchwork of local bag bans and taxes was then used convince lawmakers in Sacramento to go ahead and pass a statewide bag prohibition. Now local politicians have their sights set on a new product to ban: polystyrene foam.

Polystyrene foam is widely used by restaurants because it’s very effective at keeping hot foods hot and cold foods cold. It’s also less costly than other packaging alternatives. Given the food industry’s notoriously thin profit margins, forcing restaurant owners and operators to use more costly packaging will be difficult for many to bear.

In this way, a polystyrene foam ban acts as a tax on employers, and a regressive one at that. While the additional cost of alternative packaging made of chopped down trees is negligible for a high-end restaurant in Nob Hill or Santa Monica, it imposes a tremendous burden on mom and pop cafes and diners, one that could be financially unbearable for many small businesses.

California’s statewide minimum wage increase to $15 per hour, set to go into effect in 2022, is already set to squeeze many in the restaurant industry, reducing job creating capacity and jeopardizing the ability of some to stay in business. A polystyrene foam ban would be yet another hit to the bottom line for many restaurants, and possibly and fatal blow for some.

These foam bans, which dozens of California cities have on the books, are the latest example of politicians being obsessed with declaring war on inanimate objects (drugs, guns, bags, sugar, etc.) when the real problem that needs to be address is behavioral. The fact is that the alternative products that would replace polystyrene foam are just as likely to be littered. Democrats like to paint Republicans as anti-science. Yet these proposed polystyrene foam prohibitions pushed predominantly by progressives are based in questionable science.

Many of the paper cups and other packaging that restaurants would be forced to use under a polystyrene ban are not biodegradable, nor, unlike polystyrene foam, are they easily recycled. Though they may be less conspicuous, paper coffee cups, for example, produce more solid waste by weight than polystyrene foam.

Rather than impose bans or taxes on foam, as politicians have done with plastic bags, a better approach to combat the real enemy, which is the act of littering and not the products being littered, is through public education efforts and incentives to increase recycling. This is the approach being taken by San Diego, which launched a curbside foam recycling initiative last year.

Related Articles Constant exemptions are a lousy way to make law

Bad policies fuel fires: John Stossel

Newsom should sign bill granting civilian oversight of sheriff’s departments

California’s job numbers aren’t good

Re-elect Phillip Chen for Assembly District 55 “Just like refuse collection or road repair, we’re doing it for the public good,” Craig Gustafson, spokesman for San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, said. “The annual investment of $90,000 – out of a $3.6 billion budget – to recycle polystyrene food containers is a very small amount when you consider what an outright ban would have cost the public.”

According to San Diego Councilman Chris Cate, the price of recycling foam is a small cost to pay to avoid the “extreme route” of imposing a foam prohibition. “I think it’s easier for everybody, from an education, incentive-based approach,” Cate said.

Aside from the adverse effect that foam bans have on of employers, another reason Golden State politicians, at both the state and local levels, should not be spending their time considering and debating misguided foam prohibitions is because they have bigger fish to fry.

California has racked up approximately $1 trillion in state and municipal unfunded pension liabilities. While California politicians have plenty of ideas for new taxes and regulations, they have no plans to rectify these soul crushing unfunded pension liabilities, which taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for. Rather than spend time and scarce taxpayers resources coming up with new ways to make it harder to do business in the Golden State – like banning foam and making it illegal for restaurants to give out drinking straws – California officials need to spend their time on the real challenges facing the state.

Patrick Gleason is director of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform.