Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) tweets, "Make America Healthy Again - don't subsidize sugary drinks with tax dollars! BYU study says drinking sugar may be worse than eating it."
Make America Healthy Again - don’t subsidize sugary drinks with tax dollars!
— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) June 8, 2025
BYU study says drinking sugar may be worse than eating it https://t.co/waUN2cQVah
"Food Stamps should NOT cover sugary drinks that are strongly associated with Type 2 diabetes," Sen. Paul continues. "Congress should take up my bill to remove unhealthy foods from food stamp eligibility."
Food Stamps should NOT cover sugary drinks that are strongly associated with Type 2 diabetes. Congress should take up my bill to remove unhealthy foods from food stamp eligibility.https://t.co/8BhJvPgL4i
— Senator Rand Paul (@SenRandPaul) June 8, 2025
Paul does multiple things with these tweets. One, he, a senator, suggests a path to deal with a problem other than an individual freedom-prohibiting law or regulation. Two, he, a part of the medical field, makes a public health point about the potential detrimental effects of sugary drinks. Three, he, a Republican, shines light on the issue of tax dollars being used to subsidize unhealthy foods. Now that is some thoughtful tweeting.
Stopping the subsidizing of sugary drinks with tax dollars trumps banning sugary drinks. It is one thing for the government to remove its approval from certain products. It is another for the government to regulate certain products out of existence, which prohibits citizens from choosing or not choosing them. That, at times, is warranted. But command-and-control economic governance should be a last resort. Reallocating government dollars, tax dollars, away from certain products is a much more sensible way for the government to make its stamp without taking complete control.
Some tweets agree with what Sen. Rand Paul argues.
Agree with this
— TheSeafox (@Th3Seafox) June 8, 2025
Food stamps should not cover any luxury type foods.
— Bible Scholarship (@Biblesscholars) June 8, 2025
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of government.
— Jim Pelis (@JimPelisMO) June 8, 2025
It is all part of the grand and glorious experiment we call a representative republic. Choices must sometimes be made. Some products prevail, and others drop in the market. In some cases, consumer preference, through individual consumer decision-making, determines the staying power of certain products. In other cases, consumer responsibility, also through individual consumer decision-making, decides which products progress and which fail to move the sales needle. In few cases, hopefully, the government takes the decision-making power away from the citizen consumer through prohibitory laws or regulations of certain products.
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