NM’s left-leaning Legislature is coming for your plastic bags

Back in April of 2022 the City of Albuquerque (thankfully) ended its absurd and    ecologically-harmful plastic bag mandate. Now, Democrats in the New Mexico Legislature are pushing legislation (SB 243) that would impose a statewide plastic bag ban. The bill heads to Senate Tax Business and Transportation Committee. 

There is simply no justification for such onerous regulation. Even National Public Radio covered the issue in 2019 asking, “Are plastic bag bans garbage?” As NPR noted (of a bag ban study):

Bag bans did what they were supposed to: People in the cities with the bans used fewer plastic bags, which led to about 40 million fewer pounds of plastic trash per year. But people who used to reuse their shopping bags for other purposes, like picking up dog poop or lining trash bins, still needed bags. “What I found was that sales of garbage bags actually skyrocketed after plastic grocery bags were banned,” she says. This was particularly the case for small, 4-gallon bags, which saw a 120 percent increase in sales after bans went into effect.