Should junk food be banned?

Every time I see some hysteria on smoking and the need to remove any kind of second or third hand smoke from normal environments such as restaurants, parks, cities, etc., I wonder why don’t the do-gooders (read anti-smoking, fascistic zealots) just move to ban cigarettes? We could have our own 21^st century prohibition in a sense. What makes me laugh is that many of these folks (usually found on the left) also support legal drug use. Is that a sensible position?

So I see this op-ed on the online edition of the Baltimore Sun. Basically, the title says it all “Help kids via junk food tax” found here. To summarize really quickly, the writer, David Gray from the New America Foundation, writes that America’s children are facing a new “epidemic” – obesity. He states that instead of taxing cigarettes to support expanded coverage for Maryland’s children, Congress should look at taxing their Twinkies.

“America is not doing right by its children. There are many ways policymakers could go about taxing junk food; policy proposals are out there to raise the costs of everything from hamburgers to sodas. The best place to start might be the root ingredients, such as sweeteners, MSG and trans-fats.” (source here)

So why note this article/op-ed? This idea, (taxing junk food for the children) is an attempt at behavior modification and I have heard a number of times that Government should not/can not dictate behavior or legislate morality. My opinion is that the Government can and should at least have boundaries where good members of a society should live between. But my libertarian leanings on some issues cause me to raise eyebrows when I see articles such as this that proffer Government taxing basically behavior that it considers bad or unhealthy. This does not mean that I am for fat kids and in fact feel that more times than not, it is not the child’s fault that he or she is overweight but rather it is bad choices that we as a society make or what decisions parents make with respect to their children. Although I share Mr. Gray’s concern with respect to our kids, I don’t believe that Government should be in that position. People make good and bad choices and it is especially sad when those choices affect those most innocent such as the children but where does a society draw the line with respect to Government involvement in personal lives? What the op-ed proposes is a dangerous precedent.

People need to change personally and instead of taxing a specific food (or behavior) schools should incorporate better fitness education in a student’s daily life rather then briefing second graders on the joys of homosexual relations or global warming or teaching pre-teens how to put a condom on a banana. Fitness and good eating should be incorporated into a lifestyle and encouraged from the White House down to the local governments, not via raising taxes but on being leaders and example setters. I wouldn’t think that would be so hard.

Finally, the other thing that should be focused on is what is drawing kids away from the ball fields, soccer fields, and pools. It is that outland of cultural rot which passes for entertainment these days, the television. Why not a tax on bad programming or programming that encourages risky (read stupid) behavior like the idiotic MTV offering “Jackass”? Wouldn’t that make more sense than focusing on the food that children eat. I don’t know how long kids spending eating each day but the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that on average an American child watches 3 to 4 hours of television per day. Wouldn’t the children be better served with the Government controlling (call it taxing) the crap that passes for kids programming these days. How about a tax on families that watches more than 2 hours of television? We could just ban television all together or is that too extreme?

Final note. Check out http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/

Final, Final note. Turn off your computer and go outside and move!!!!