To the editor: Upon reading this article, I cannot help but think that these attorneys general from other states and these plastic industry executives should come to Pomona on a Tuesday morning and join with the grassroots effort Pomona Beautiful in cleaning up streets (“Battle over single-use plastics erupts as 17 states move to block California law,” June 23). Let them spend a couple of hours picking up plastic drink cups, lids for those cups and plastic straws, all in various states of degradation and all lying in the gutter ready to make their way into the storm drains that lead to the ocean. And while they are at it, they can also pick up the hundreds of cigarette butts lying there with the take-out packaging.
While I am picking up these items and dragging around a half-filled trash bag, I certainly believe there ought to be a stronger law.
Don Martens, Pomona
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To the editor: You’ve got to be kidding me — hypocrisy run amok. Really, these states claim their free speech is threatened because California dares to try to make the environment better by limiting single-use plastic? The commerce clause has never been tortured this far, even in our strange times.
The hypocrisy comes from states that California taxes support. We provide health and family planning for women in those states who need it and are denied care at home. Still, they feel free to threaten our doctors for providing such lifesaving services. Meanwhile, many (not necessarily all) of these states are fine with efforts to prevent people of color and women from voting.
This pushback is led by the attorney general of Nebraska, a state in which I went to high school and my parents were lifelong Republicans. I imagine they are whirling in their tombs seeing what has become of these practical commonsense people they lived among. Just adapt and make better containers, please.
Jay Coffman, San Diego