If we're coming at this from a perspective of fighting climate change, I don't think plastic straws are really the hill to die on.

The reality of any political battle is that you always have to ask "What is the thing that will create the most net impact?" But net impact includes "Not making my cause toxic to the average person."

The public, in general, are very amenable to changes like getting rid of disposable plastic bags and plastic packaging, and those can have as much impact or more than getting rid of plastic straws. Those are also changes that don't create significant negative impacts for people with disabilities.

And that's before you even get to the industrial scale changes that would have far more impact. If you look at, say, plastic waste in the ocean, about half of it is fishing nets. Changing fishing industry practices would be a lot more of an impactful approach.

Banning plastic straws is like putting out the grease fire on the stove while the whole house is burning down around you. Yes, technically it's a thing we should do, but it is not even remotely the first thing we should do. And the people advocating for it are often doing so as a way of pretending to do something meaningful while ignoring the far bigger industry level changes we could be making that would have a far bigger impact.

As a political issue, plastic straws have become entirely toxic, and given how small a piece of the puzzle they are, there really is no benefit to dying on this largely worthless hill when our efforts could be better spent elsewhere.

So somebody in the government definitely has some plastic straw shares they aren’t willing to part with

"Over 99% of plastic is made from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels, and the fossil fuel and plastic industries are deeply connected" (source).