New York imposes partial ban on huge soda drinks
Andrea Hebert protests the proposed ‘soda-ban’ that New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has suggested, outside City Hall in New York in this file picture. — Reuters pic NEW YORK, Sept 14 — New York City passed the first US ban of oversized sugary drinks yesterday in its latest controversial step to reduce obesity and its deadly complications in a nation with a weight problem.
By an 8-0 vote with one abstention, the mayoral-appointed city health board outlawed sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces nearly everywhere they are sold, except groceries and convenience stores.
Violators of the ban, which does not include diet sodas, face a US$200 (RM609) fine.
Opponents, who cast the issue as an infringement on personal freedom and called Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who proposed the ban in May, an overbearing nanny, vowed to continue their fight.
They may go to court in the hopes of blocking or overturning the measure before it takes effect in March.
“It’s sad that the board wants to limit our choices,” Liz Berman, a business owner and chairwoman of New Yorkers for Beverage Choices, a beverage industry-sponsored group, said in a statement.
“We are smart enough to make our own decisions about what to eat and drink.”
On Twitter, Bloomberg heralded the measure’s passage as “the single biggest step any gov’t has taken to curb #obesity. It will help save lives”.
Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the measure was likely to be copied elsewhere in the nation — and even the world — as were the city’s restrictions on trans fats and smoking.
Will other cities follow?
Kelly Brownell, director of Yale University’s Rudd Centre for Food Policy & Obesity, said there was “quite a good chance” that other US cities would once again follow New York’s lead and replicate the idea that triggered opponents’ outrage and doubts about the Bloomberg’s leadership.
“It doesn’t seem so crazy any more. You need somebody to go first,” said Brownell.
Claiming the ban will hurt small businesses, opponents cited a recent poll by the New York Times, which reported 60 per cent of New Yorkers believe the ban is a bad idea.
But the Health Department said yesterday that most of the extraordinary response it received to the initiative — 32,000 of nearly 39,000 oral and written comments — favoured the restriction.
Board members rejected opponents’ claims that they merely rubber-stamped the latest Bloomberg initiative, saying they discussed the issue at length and felt obligated to take what board member Dr Deepthiman Gowda, an internist who teaches at Columbia University, called “a small step but a bold step and an important one”.
Gowda and fellow board member Susan Klitzman, director of Hunter College’s Urban Public Health Programme, said they worried that the city was becoming acclimatised to the problem of excess weight.
“I see the crisis every single day and I feel to not act would be criminal,” Klitzman said.
The board member who abstained from the vote, Dr Sixto Caro, an internist, said he did so because he was not convinced a ban would make a difference in fighting obesity.
About one-third of Americans are obese, and about 10 per cent of the nation’s healthcare bill is tied to obesity-related diseases, such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and hypertension, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
According to the most recently available data from The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity rates among Americans continue to rise.
The OECD projects more than two out of three people will be overweight or obese in some developed countries by 2020. — Reuters
