It’s one thing to tell people they should eat their vegetables, but it’s quite another to ban everything but carrots and broccoli from the dinner table.
But for many of state’s lawmakers, making rules about what Californians can and can’t eat is just part of their job description, convinced as they are that politicians know what’s best for us.
In San Francisco, the city is gearing up for a soda pop war on next year’s ballot, with Supervisor Scott Weiner calling for a two-cents-per-ounce tax on all sugary drinks. San Francisco being San Francisco, about the only complaint now being heard is from another supervisor who has his own plan for a soda tax and different ideas about how the estimated $31million in annual revenues should be spent.
If this sounds familiar, it should. A year ago, Richmond tried to put a penny-an-ounce tax on soda, only to see the ballot measure go down by a two-to-one margin, thanks to voters whose outrage was fueled by more than $2 million in campaign contributions from the American Beverage Association.
A similar measure in El Monte was walloped in a June vote.
And don’t forget that San Francisco and Santa Clara County also have banned McDonalds from putting toys in any Happy Meals that contain more than the limits they set on calories and salt.
In each case, lawmakers argued that they were just doing what was needed to stem the rising tide of childhood obesity, forgetting – or perhaps ignoring – the fact that children have parents whose job it is, morally and legally, to see to their well being.
Unless the politicians are planning to send every parent with an overweight kid to the slammer for child abuse, maybe they should back off and let those parents decide whether their child can munch the occasional French fry or, gasp, drink a Coke.
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