I don't drink soft drinks or live in New York but I don't like Mayor Bloomberg's proposal to ban large cups of such beverages. For one thing, the plan as stated seems to be filled with loopholes. What about buying two drinks? And lately, every fast food place I go into seems to offer unlimited free refills.
More to the point, there's a limit as to how much The State (even when it's The City) should be controlling what people put into their bodies. I could maybe see the justification for saying, "Look, because people drink this stuff, it creates public health problems that cost the city $X million per year so let's impose a tax that will recoup that money." But that's not what Bloomberg wants and if you did pass that, you'd have to start controlling the portion sizes of french fries and the packaging sizes of M&M's and the tonnage of Whoppers.
Meanwhile in similar news, I voted by-mail the other day on the proposal here in California that would impose a new hefty tax on cigarettes. I don't smoke, will never smoke and couldn't dislike smoking more. It's killed (literally) friends of mine, put other friends in the hospital and I find it repulsive to be around. Still, I have some sympathy for smokers being treated like lepers. It's legal and they have the right to do it to themselves as long as it doesn't affect me. I feel this way about a lot of things including the drinking of alcohol, the eating of cole slaw and the watching of Jimmy Kimmel.
I was conflicted about how to vote on this because after doing a bit of research on the 'net, I came to the conclusion that the "anti" campaign is a matter of tobacco companies spending millions of dollars to spread what are mostly bogus facts. My natural instinct is to want to see a campaign like that fail…but that's not reason enough. It is, after all, possible to make a dishonest case for a good cause.
My problem is that I don't think this is about discouraging smoking and don't think it's the government's place to do anything more than disseminate accurate information about what it does to you. I think this is more a matter of: "The state needs money. I don't want my taxes raised and since I don't smoke, let's stick to it the smokers." That doesn't seem right to me. Hey, I don't go to football games or eat Mexican food. Let's balance the budget by imposing a hefty tax on football tickets and tostadas. That's not how government and taxation are supposed to work.
I went back and forth on this one and finally decided to vote against it. Polls say it'll pass by a good margin so I'm not regretting my decision. But if it passes or fails by one vote, I'm going to worry I did the wrong thing.