Last summer Mayor Bloomberg of New York City submitted a plan to place a ban on large sugary drinks. To be specific it was a ban on 16 ounce or larger sugary beverages being sold from restaurants, movie theaters and other food service businesses. This was an unprecedented move by the Mayor whose policies are largely based around public health, and it’s safe to say this was a legacy play. Only in the 23rd hour was his new groundbreaking law shot down by a judge claiming it was “arbitrary and capricious.”
When I first caught wind of the proposed law my initial thought was, how? How could government tell us what to drink, and how much of it to drink? Surely this was unconstitutional. I figure adults could make such decisions for themselves; they do not need anyone saving them from soda.
As time passed and one reflects on the current state of America right now, maybe not just sugary drinks should be policed but also everything else concerning Americans and their diets. The stats overwhelmingly say that we are failing miserably as a whole to become a healthy society. Last year we spent 190 billion treating obesity-related health conditions. It is said that 1 in 100 obesity related deaths could be blamed on too many sweetened beverages. The diseases that these sugar-sweeten soft drink causes are diabetes and cardiovascular disease amongst a growing list of others. These diseases end in death, and carry high cost for treatment/maintenance till they claim your life.
A person’s body is their temple, and they should be able to treat it as wanted. ‘The Catch’ is when they do run into health problems after years of dietary negligence, who should pay for that? When one hears its taxpayer’s money covering the bulk of the cost for obesity related disease treatment; unprecedented laws should be put into place to police these unprecedented times. Two in three Americans are either overweight or obese, never in history have the stats been so tilted. It’s a problem that’s quickly spiraled out of control and maybe some ‘constitutional’ rights should be tweaked to reel it back in.
Furious Rebukes 