We should not use tax dollars to purchase food and drinks that we know to be bad for people.
This opinion puts me in a very odd situation—agreeing with a Republican proposal, sponsored in Alabama by state Sen. Arthur Orr, that would prohibit those who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Benefits from purchasing soft drinks and candy. Alabama is not the only state to have such a proposal.
It doesn’t really matter to me that it’s a Republican-led initiative. It’s a good one.
I know that saying that will likely anger a lot of my progressive friends, but I simply can’t see the benefits of providing money to purchase items that we know will negatively impact the health of people. And make no mistake, we know that soft drinks and lots of junk food will most certainly negatively affect the health of people.
I do not want to play a role in harming people. If we don’t start encouraging—or even forcing people—to consume healthier, better made food and drink, we are going to have a nation filled with unhealthy people. That will be particularly true for poor people, because so much of the truly awful things found on store shelves also happen to be the cheapest.
By supporting the purchases of these foods and drinks, it seems to me that we’re encouraging clearly unhealthy habits and contributing to what will ultimately be a lifetime of expensive health problems that could prohibit folks from leading full lives. (That’s not to mention driving up the health care costs for everyone else, including other struggling families.)
I can’t be a party to that.
Now, all of that said, there are also some other things that I can’t be a party to, and one of those is the staggering level of hypocrisy required to pretend that you care about people’s health while limiting SNAP-eligible items but also doing absolutely nothing to address the well-documented health care crisis happening throughout this state.
Clearly, Republicans in this state have some basic understanding of human health and the role food consumption plays. That makes it incredibly difficult for me to believe that they lack an understanding of the way their refusal to expand Medicaid, or expand health care services in any way, has negatively impacted the health of millions of Alabamians. It makes it very hard for me to believe that they lack an understanding of the negative effect a lack of access to care in rural and impoverished communities can have on children, infants and everyone else. It makes it impossible for me to believe that they have no understanding of the impact a lack of quality sex education, along with available contraception, has on teen health, infant mortality rates and sexually transmitted diseases.
There’s simply no way you can understand one and not those others. Which means, this whole move to ban junk food is far less about actually caring about the well being of those around us and far more about finding yet another way to punish people for having the gall to be poor.
Orr has been in the Alabama Senate for nearly 20 years now. He’s watched dozens of rural hospitals close. He’s seen hundreds of thousands of Alabamians fall into the coverage gap and be left without insurance and unable to receive basic preventative care. He’s watched Alabama’s infant mortality fluctuate between third-world country level and one of the better third-world country’s level. We have consistently ranked as one of the three worst states for overall health in his time. Our teen pregnancy rates have been off the charts. Our maternal death rates would make an 1800s mining town blush. And our obesity rates would rival those of a Cracker Barrel dining room.
And you’re telling me that the only one we can address in all that time is maybe kinda sorta doing something about obesity in the 14 percent of this state’s population that receives SNAP benefits? Hip! Hip! Hooray!
Let’s be honest here about the proposal, too—it’s lazy. It’s beyond lazy, actually. Because it proves that the goal here isn’t actually to help, only to punish.
A real proposal would include incentives for purchasing healthy foods. It would include an education initiative to teach people about the foods we consume and how they affect our health. It would include some level of tax breaks to make healthy foods cheaper.
In his comments pushing this legislation, Orr has talked repeatedly about the state’s obesity problem. Nearly 40 percent of the state is considered obese—a staggering (literally) number. It is a huge, huge problem that is costing us billions of dollars every year, and quite literally killing a bunch of us.
Addressing that problem would be a wonderful, worthwhile goal for any lawmaker at any level of government. Working with doctors and educators and fellow lawmakers, it could be a truly bipartisan effort that could show immediate results.
Or we could just kick poor people around again.
