Thursday, March 21, 2013

NO 7-Eleven and the soda ban

Now, someone says that NO 7-Eleven is against the >16 oz sugary drink ban. This complaint strikes me as moronic, but I guess we have to explain this, since there are morons.

NO 7-Eleven thinks the ban unfairly promotes 7-Eleven and its aggressive campaign to add 100 new stores in Manhattan. People think that the conveneince store exemption doesn't unfairly benefit 7-Eleven because 7-Eleven competes with other convenience stores, not with restaurants and movie theaters. This analysis is not moronic, it's just thoughtless. Pizza places, Chinese take-out places, bagel stores, cafes, felafel places -- 7-Eleven competes with all of them, but 7-Eleven offers the Big Gulp, those others couldn't under the ban. So the ban would have given 7-Eleven an unfair advantage. You go to 7-Eleven for your Big Gulp, and what do you see? They offer pizza there. QED

Does that mean that NO 7-Eleven supports >16oz drinks? Silly rabbit. Of course not. Our objection is to the unfair application of a ban that promotes a corporate store over its competition.

Look, the ban doesn't prevent consumers from drinking sugary drinks. It just directs them to 7-Eleven where the Big Gulp is emblazoned all over its marketing. So the ban doesn't promote health. It promotes 7-Eleven.

Moron.


(Sorry for the verbal abuse, but really, sometimes comments are so rabid and thoughtless.) My personal view on sugar-based beverages: producers of corn syrup should be desubsidized and the corporate procurement of sugars in production should be heavily taxed. Then the burden would be on the corporations, not on low-income consumers (corporations couldn't pass on the cost without losing market share), and it would encourage corporations to find cheap alternatives to refined sugar-based beverages.

1 comment:

rob said...

My personal view of the ban: producers of corn syrup should be desubsidized and the corporate procurement of sugars in production should be heavily taxed. Then the burden would be on the corporations, not on low-income consumers (corporations couldn't pass on the cost without losing market share), and it would encourage corporations to find cheap alternatives to refined sugar-based beverages.