A Dry Time in the High Country

Nevada Declares War on Water Bottles

Here’s the latest curious happening in the silver hills of Nevada, where liberty once roamed free as a jackrabbit with a firecracker tied to its tail. It seems the good and well-washed senators of that sagebrush state, not content to lord over folks, have taken it upon themselves to rescue Lake Tahoe from the perilous menace of the plastic water bottle.

Yes, sirree, Senate Bill 324—an instrument as dry in prose as it aims to make the lips of the citizenry—has passed with thunderous approval with 16 yays and four nays, and one lawmaker presumably absent polishing their halo. The law proclaims, in all its righteous glory, that the sale, offer for sale, or even the noble act of sharing a small bottle of water—if it’s plastic and holds four liters or less—is to be met with the full disfavor of the local board of health.

Not the Attorney General, mind you. They amended that. Too busy, I reckon, tracking down moonshiners or book club tax evaders.

Should you, in a fit of parched desperation, offer your neighbor a store-bought bottle of refreshment, expect a finger-wagging warning. You do it again–and the State may lighten your wallet by a hundred dollars.

Keep it up—say, out of spite or simple dehydration—and they’ll slap you with a fine of five hundred dollars. In other words, you’ll go broke trying to stay hydrated.

It’s a curious sort of tyranny, where the chains are compostable hemp, and the jailer wears a biodegradable badge. And what’s the crime, you ask? Convenience? Thirst? A penchant for cold water in a warm climate?

While I bear no affection for plastic, and I love a clean lake as much as any man who’s tried to fish with a rusty hook and a hangover. But when the State grows so high and mighty that it starts policing what vessel a man may use to carry his water, you bet it’ll soon turn its nose to your sandwich wrap, your shoelaces, and the label on your apple.

Once upon a time, this land was where a man could pan gold by day, drink whiskey by night, and make a fool of himself somewhere in between—all without asking the government which container was most ethically suitable. The folly here ain’t in the bottle—it’s in the notion that freedom ought to be like medicine, given with strict instructions and side effects included.

Let them clean the lake, I say. Let them teach and persuade. But don’t let them fine a man for carrying his water in a plastic jug. That ain’t health enforcement—it’s high-minded meddling dressed as an environmental sermon.

And if you think they’ll stop with the bottle, I’ve got a bridge over the Truckee to sell you—made entirely of paper straws.