Let's all please keep in mind that this discussion is not about banning adults from eating or drinking anything. It's about a proposal to stop selling giant sized portions of sugar water to children, who will by their nature want to drink more of this crap than is healthy.
When an adult drinks this stuff, we expect them to know the consequences, and to be making a deliberate decision to accept those consequences. But that has nothing to do with children drinking too much sugar water. Children don't really understand the consequences, and can't be expected to make reasoned and informed decisions about such things. Their parents are supposed to be making those decision for them, but clearly many are not doing so, or are deliberately ignoring the consequences that will befall their own children as a result.
So all these arguments based on "infringing our freedom" aren't especially applicable in this case, because we aren't talking about an adult's freedom of to abuse themselves with bad food. We're talking about adults choosing to harm their kids by allowing them to ingest bad food.
I think it raises a lot of questions, mostly having to do with the age a child matures. I don't think they all mature at the same time, so you are left with trying to figure out at which age can a person decide to have a soft drink. Do you choose 13, 16, 18, or 21? Maybe some more nonsensical number?
That is the issue with making something into a crime that requires arbitrary limitations. It's far easier I believe to educate parents about the dangers of it and have them make the decision about when the child has matured enough to be able to handle something.
We also have to face the reality of things. Making it to where a child can't get public access to something doesn't remove the ability to get private access. Just because the law says you have to be 21 to buy alcohol, that never stopped my family from giving it to me long before then. So you are taking a lot of money to institute legislation on this when in the end nothing will change.
Also: to all you folks who are anti-abortion, why is it OK in your mind for the government to deny the freedom of a woman to choose an abortion, so as to protect the life of the fetus, but then be so outrageous to you that the government would deny the freedom of a parent to feed their kids massive doses of sugar water, so as to protect the health of the kids?
The claim is being thrown around that this is a "liberal" proposal, but it seems to me to be very similar to conservatives proposing a ban on abortion. Both of these proposed bans seek to limit the freedom of adults so as to protect the health of children.
I see both as being more about individual rights. An embryo or fetus is human and is developing. I believe it is an individual and I don't believe the course of nature should be altered in the case of life. I apply that principal to war and such as well. So once a person is mature enough to be able to understand their choice about what to put in their body, let them make it. It's two completely different things here, it seems. One is about a life and death matter, one is just about a substance.
