A Black Market in Coke

Former President Clinton and his nanny-state buddies have worked out an agreement to rid our schools of evil soda pop:

The nation's largest beverage distributors have agreed to halt nearly all soda sales to public schools, according to a deal announced Wednesday by the William J. Clinton Foundation.

Under the agreement, the companies have agreed to sell only water, unsweetened juice and low-fat milks to elementary and middle schools, said Jay Carson, a spokesman for former President Bill Clinton. Diet sodas would be sold only to high schools.

Granted, sodas are not the best thing for kids to be drinking, but it's certainly not the health crisis that the nanny-staters would have us believe. And of course, when you ban something that people want, all you do is create more demand for it (see Prohibition). Instead of buying sodas at school, and therefore providing a financial benefit to the school, kids will either bring them from home or buy them off campus. The net effect is that the schools will lose much needed sales revenue.

And how long will it be before someone argues that diet drinks are also dangerous and must be banned? There's already a collection of people out there who think that the artificial sweeteners will give you all sorts of diseases. I'm sure another ban is coming.