Instead of banning soda, maybe it's time we banned stupid government bans

Tuesday, June 19, 2012 by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger Editor of NaturalNews.com (See all articles...) Tags: soda ban, nanny state, big government

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(NaturalNews) As the Health Ranger, I'm on the record strongly opposing soda consumption. Years ago, I wrote the popular self-help guide, "The Five Soft Drink Monsters," which helps soda addicts get off sodas and transition to healthier drinks like tea or water (http://programs.webseed.com/The_Five_Soft_Dr...). Yet even I think the sudden wave of interest in nanny-state cities like New York and Cambridge wanting to ban soda sales is pure insanity.

For starters, I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that states are increasingly decriminalizing marijuana even as they are moving toward criminalizing sodas. Before long, if a New York police officer happens upon a gang banger smoking a joint and drinking a Big Gulp soda, the kid will be arrested for the soda, not the joint!

What this is going to lead to, if we're not careful, is the Department of Homeland Soda Security (DHSS), with 50,000 new agents roaming the streets, groping your genitals (just like the TSA) in order to see if you might be carrying "illegal soda" in your pants. "Is that a 16 oz. soda in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?"

How to turn everything into a crime

This police state / nanny state insanity has got to stop in America. The TSA, for its part, has never caught a single terrorist, yet the agency itself has terrorized tens of millions of Americans. It has become the source of fear and terrorism in America.

The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, has only been effective at raising domestic paranoia and turning normal behaviors into suspected crimes. So now, to top it off, we get these completely insane privacy-invading, micro-managing nanny bureaucrats like Bloomberg and now Cambridge Mayor Henrietta Davis who think that they can solve all the world's problems if we just give them enough power to dominate and control our lives.

It starts with criminalizing soda "possession," followed by arrests of people caught with "intent to distribute" soda. From there, it escalates into two guys who talked about distributing soda and are now being charged with "conspiracy to distribute an illegal substance," which is of course a felony. Can you imagine these people winding up in the joint, next to a violent rapist who asks, "What are you in for?"

"Pepsi."

It doesn't even stop with soda. As the nanny state insanity escalates, before long you're facing prison time for using too many sheets of toilet paper in a public restroom monitored by TSA security cameras manned by government perverts and pedophiles (who else?). Before you know it, you've got government "mattress inspectors" conducting warrantless searches into your home, confirming you haven't removed the safety warning tag off your mattress. If the government has its way, the average person will commit a dozen crimes before leaving the house in the morning, and then the police state goon squads can selectively enforce all their arcane, ninnying laws against political enemies or those who speak out against the government.

That's what this is coming to. Be careful any time you surrender power to the State. You're just begging to be censored, suppressed and have your rights stolen away by all the liberal "do gooder" Big Government worshippers who think a perfect world is one in which citizens are utterly enslaved and completely dominated by well-intentioned bureaucrats.

The real contradiction: Big sodas are illegal unless they contain aspartame

The real hilarity in these soda bans becomes apparent when you realize the bans don't apply to diet soda! So as long as your 16 oz. soda contains the brain-damaging chemical known as aspartame (https://www.naturalnews.com/Infographic-Top-1...), the state allows you to drink as much as you want!

So it's not really a ban on all the harmful ingredients sodas contain such as phosphoric acid, a highly acidic substance that causes kidney stones and bone mineral depletion. Pepsi's lawyers recently admitted this acid is so powerful it can dissolve a mouse and turn it into a gel-like substance (https://www.naturalnews.com/034602_Mountain_D...). This acid is present both in regular sodas and diet sodas.

The soda ban, it seems, is really just a ban on sodas made with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which has suddenly become the enemy of choice in an irrational world of nutritionally illiterate bureaucrats. Sure, HFCS is bad for your health and promotes diabetes and obesity, but aspartame promotes seizures and blindness, and it remains perfectly acceptable to Mayor Bloomberg. After all, what would New York City be without a few seizure cases on the sidewalk?

What's really extraordinary is what Bloomberg did not ban. There is no ban on cancer-causing sodium nitrite in hot dogs, sausages, bacon and beef jerky. So you can eat your way to pancreatic cancer with the full approval of the Mayor, but if you dare sip a drink of some corn syrup, then all of a sudden you're a bad person.

There was no ban on MSG, either. So you can eat your way to obesity, diabetes and hormone disorders, wolfing down MSG snack chips and jerky treats, and the Mayor is fine with all that.

So it's not about protecting the health of the people, you see. If that were true, he would ban the far more dangerous foods and snacks sold throughout New York City. It's really about scoring political points by appearing to be the "protector" of the citizens.

And this, my friends, is the most dangerous role of government: Be on red alert any time you hear, "We're from the government, and we're here to protect you from yourself."

We're from the government, and we're here to protect you from yourself!

These are quite possibly the twelve most dangerous words ever uttered in America. Because from this illogical and liberty-crushing premise, the government can justify any and all invasions of your privacy. It can surveil your home power usage through Smart Meters. It can install chemical sensors in your toilet to see if you're using recreational drugs. It can (and does) read your email, monitor your phone calls and scan your back yard using high altitude military spy drones. It's all done for your own protection, didn't you know?

Such is the mantra of every police state: We're monitoring you for your own protection!

If you diverge from the currently accepted, politically-motivated pattern of "normalcy," you suddenly become an enemy of the state. Are you trying to grow medicinal herbs in your own yard? That's not acceptable! The bureaucrats destroy the garden! (http://www.newson6.com/story/18802728/woman-...) and (http://www.prisonplanet.com/all-over-america...)

Are you home schooling your children and keeping them away from vaccines? You're an enemy of the state, didn't you know? And the state will bring guns to your home, kidnap your children, and force them to be vaccinated at gunpoint. (https://www.naturalnews.com/022267.html)

Are you buying ammunition for preparedness? You're "hoarding ammo!" And clearly, that makes you a nut job even though the largest hoarder of ammo is the United States government itself, and the Department of Homeland Security specifically (https://www.naturalnews.com/035649_DHS_ammuni...).

See, once you abandon liberty and allow the government to micro-manage everything in your life, you are no longer a free citizen living in a free society. You're just a subservient slave to the system. And the system -- the government -- is run by insane people on a power trip. They are never satisfied with their power and seek to dominate and control every little detail of our lives to the point of total enslavement.

Maybe it's time to ban stupid government bans

There is one thing we should ban, however: government bans that target the People.

It's time to end all the stupid, politically-calculated, freedom crushing bans that have been put in place by federal, state and local governments. No more banning industrial hemp farming or even medical marijuana use. No bans on food choice. No bans on home gardening. No bans on owning gold, or ammo, or even legal firearms.

Corporate bans, in contrast, make perfect sense, since corporations have no souls, no compassion, no ethics and no morals. Corporations must be banned from dumping toxic chemicals into the river, selling poison and calling it food, or ripping off senior citizens with complex financial scams. If there's anywhere that regulations and bans are needed, it's in the world of corporations, not the world of individuals.

Heck, maybe it's time to just ban big government and get back to a society based on liberty. There's already a blueprint for such a society; it's called the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and these documents specifically say that all powers not granted to the federal government are reserved to the states, or to the People. Virtually every federal regulatory body operating in America today operates in outright violation of the Constitution, including the DEA, ATF, DHS, TSA, FDA, USDA, FTC, FCC, and even the failed Department of Education.

Because if we're really going to talk about banning things in America, we should probably start by banning all the rogue, out-of-control federal agencies that prey upon the American people as tyrants. Instead of banning soda, in other words, maybe we should just ban tyranny in America.

Sources for this story include:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/06/soda-ba...
http://www2.cambridgema.gov/cityClerk/Policy...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/30177...