Yeah, those fast food cups have the lid as a necessary component of structural integrity. Once you remove it you can’t move the damn thing cause it squishes together rather than lifting up, reducing volume and causing a mess.
Lid and straw are required for wax cups.
The only time I use a straw is when I make a milkshake at home or get a fast-food drink. I would like to remember to use them more, because it’s better for my teeth. I wouldn’t use one in an alcoholic beverage though… at least, not in public.
I usually only use them with fast food drinks, because I wouldn’t know how else you could do it because those ‘cups’ aren’t really built well at all.
The only time I use a straw is if the drink has ice in it. The presence of the ice makes it more likely the beverage will spill if you tip the glass to drink from it. Plus the straw filters out the ice and lets me drink just the beverage.
Straws are for milk shakes. Or for certain cocktails (mai tais for example).
I don’t tend to use them for soft drinks.
So I’m in the sometimes with cold beverages camp. There are two cases:
- There’s a lid on the beverage to prevent spills which requires using a straw. For some reason, hot beverage lids like that are designed for sipping and cold beverage lids are designed for straws. When not spilling is important, I follow the herd on this one.
- I really hate it when you’re drinking from a glass and the ice shifts and suddenly you have ice tea/soda/whatever splashed all the way down your front. Straws do prevent that occasional embarrassment.
I don’t use straws because usually I drink water. When you order water in restaurants, the ice is at the top, but the water at the bottom is still not cold enough. A straw brings up the lukewarm water, not the cold stuff.
Never. In restaurants people WILL be giving me straws. I end up with a little pile of them next to my plate. Only once or twice has a server tipped to it and stopped handing them out.
I generally tear a pinky finger sized hole in the rim of the lid and drink through that. It keeps the cup together and keeps ice off of my teeth.
I find that if I have a drink with a straw, I’ll drink more.
I used never to use straws but gradually my habits have changed. I use them when I’m given them, otherwise not.
I voted “never,” although the one exception I would make is having eaten in the dining area of a fast food restaurant and helped myself to a free refill of Dr. Pepper, I would probably carry it out in the cup with the lid and the straw poked through it, just for convenience and avoidance of spills during any further drinking and driving. But I only rarely eat fast food, whether dining in or drive-through.
Otherwise, I never use a straw. I tend to drink water at most restaurant meals, and I leave the straw they bring wrapped and never use it. And I would never think of drinking a mixed drink through a straw.
It’s peach season so I voted for pie.
Straws are only for fast-food drinks served in waxed-paper cups that I’m drinking in the car.
Anything else is no straws.
Couple of odd notes regarding straws and me:
I read somewhere once that a set of researchers looked into a group of elderly people, and the ones who drank from straws had more wrinkles around their mouths from pursing their lips up, and the ones who didn’t drink with straws had more discolored teeth from the drinks sloshing around their mouths. Since the procedure for whitening teeth is a bit less drastic than the one for getting rid of wrinkles, I was pretty happy that my preference was for no straws.
One of my relatives used to berate me for not using a straw when drinking from glasses in a restaurant, because according to her the glasses were probably dirty. My thought then and now is that 1) if the glass is dirty, you ought to be able to see that it’s dirty, and 2) if it’s dirty, then the drink you’re drinking is all up on that cup, so why on earth does drinking from a straw make it any better? Never did get a reasonable answer from her.
Sitting at a table eating, no straw. Walking or driving - straw with cold beverage, never with hot.
Except for milkshakes - always a straw with a milkshake. 
I generally don’t like straws, but they’re pretty convenient for cold drinks on the go.
My views have been thoroughly covered by others and I do not feel the need to expound further.
However, I did cast my vote for strawberry icebox pie.
+1
In private I’ll drink chocolate milk with a straw. I don’t know if it actually tastes better that way or my mind is fooling me with memories of my childhood. I drink white milk (and most other things) without a straw.
Obviously if you’re a guy you don’t want to be seen sucking on a straw in public. Because what else would you like in your mouth? Dat inescapable middle school Freudian logic.
What, none of you people have heard of leptospirosis? Allegedly, soda cans left in dirty stock rooms in the back of restaurants can collect rat urine, which contains the germs for lepto, which can KILL YOU!!
Yeah, it’s probably an urban legend. But ever since I heard it, I can’t drink soda out of a can at a restaurant without a straw, so the rat-born cooties won’t find their way into my precious bodily fluids.
That’s weird.
And for the record, I can’t remember the last time I drank through a straw.