The mayor of San Francisco has declared a city-wide ban on sugary drinks:
Coca-Cola is out, and soy milk is now part of San Francisco’s official city policy.
Under an executive order from Mayor Gavin Newsom, Coke, Pepsi and Fanta Orange are no longer allowed in vending machines on city property, although their diet counterparts are – up to a point.
Newsom’s directive, issued in April but whose practical impacts are starting to be felt now, bars calorically sweetened beverages from vending machines on city property.
That includes non-diet sodas, sports drinks and artificially sweetened water. Juice must be 100 percent fruit or vegetable juice with no added sweeteners. Diet sodas can be no more than 25 percent of the items offered, the directive says.
There should be “ample choices” of water, “soy milk, rice milk and other similar dairy or non dairy milk,” says the directive, which also covers fat and sugar content in vending machine snacks.
In theory, this is a good idea. I’m personally trying to cut soda out of my life in favor of water or Steaz. But this is a personal choice that I have made for myself. I don’t want or need the government dictating what I should or shouldn’t be drinking.
What do you think? Are these kinds of guidelines good or bad?
Well, it’s not really a “city-wide ban on sugary drinks”; it’s a city-property-wide ban on selling sugary drinks in vending machines. The mayor is acting in his capacity as an office manager, not as a government official. So there isn’t really a civil liberties issue here.
Whether it’s a good idea for managers to engage in this kind of social engineering is an open question. I personally don’t have a problem with the actions he’s taken here; if he’d banned sugary drinks outright rather than just stopping selling them, my opinion would be different.
For a bit of perspective here, I’ve just finished working for an employer who wouldn’t let us eat any kind of food (including fruit and other snacks) at our desks. Now that was irritating.
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