Oh wow -- "New Jersey's plastic consumption triples after plastic bag ban enacted, study shows".

And most people drive there. In NYC it might be even worse than just tripling.

That article sources the same report commissioned by the plastic industry lobbying group, so take it with a large grain of salt.

...wait, wouldn't the plastic industry be delighted that people are using more plastic?

Yes, which is why they'd have a interest in publishing studies that make bag bans look useless or counterproductive, because they want to persuade people not to pass or to repeal bans.

Indeed, which is why it is strange they are pushing this narrative that reusable is "bad", rather than keeping quite.

Maybe the narrative is obscuring something with statistics. If reusable doesn't really make plastic use go up, and that bag bans are effective in reducing plastic use, the industry opposing them has an incentive to make it look like they are ineffective. They're using the same tactics the tobacco industry used to counter the facts about cigarettes.