Plastic straws?

Used to be, straws were paper.  They worked.  They issued straws at the soda fountain with milkshakes, frappes, and root beer floats.  Special treats, not every day drinking.  And they issued straws at lunch in school to sip the milk out of those tiny little paper milk cartons, if you had paid in your milk money that week.   Each classroom had a big box of straws sitting on a shelf.  Don't remember exactly just when plastic replaced paper for straws, must have been sometime in the 1960's
   I don't remember drinking soda (tonic in New England) with straws.  You popped the top off the bottle (canned soda was much later) stuck the bottle in your mouth and drank.  You had to learn the trick of putting your upper lip half way down the mouth of the bottle to let the air in as the soda was sucked out.  Most kids mastered the art by the age of three.  My parents didn't approve of soda, they thought it was bad for kids teeth, so I didn't get to enjoy it all that often. 
   The TV newsies have been doing a lotta talking about plastic straws filling the Pacific ocean with floating plastic.  Despite all the talk, I have trouble believing that plastic straws are a serious issue or yet another environmental hazard.  I'm kinda hazarded out these days.