New York bans the sale or large sugary drinks

The scenarios you described with alcohol and cigarettes are just embarrassing, not illegal so it's hardly the same thing. In my experience, there's not as much of a stigma doing something under-age (sex and alcohol) as much as there is doing something illegal regardless of age - illegal AND under-age in this case. The point of the age limit is mostly to make it clear at what age a drug isn't going to affect development, which is important, and although I don't think it will deter everyone, the educating aspect of it is important. Pregnant teens still seek help, and drunk youngsters often get picked up by a parent or older sibling - I can't think of anyone who's gotten too high and had family called.

The negatives / positives point is subjective.

You do have a valid idea about illegal underselling which I considered before I posted. Nevertheless, in the same way most people don't opt to drink moonshine or shoe polish melted through burnt toast despite the heavy tax on alcohol, I don't think most people would opt for dodgy produce when quality is available. I'm not talking about charging £120 for a gram of MD , but the controlled production and increased quality of drugs would inevitably increase how much it costs to make them. Perhaps you're right though, in which case the government should match the price of dealers. If it cost you £40 for a gram of cocaine before, and you're being offered quality government approved coke for the same price, I know which I'd go for. If your dealer dropped the price to £30, you'd be sceptical and it would not exactly be costing you more than before to go with the 'safe' coke.

The girl not buying her own e is irrelevant - all the same things discussed apply to her friends.

Firstly you citing the perils of a war on drugs does not indicate that the opposite, I e a legalisation of drugs is the right approach, if anything there would be more deaths as a direct result of the drugs as opposed to the indirect deaths associated with territorial disputes and the like.

What the money that focuses on the war on drugs would better be spent on is a look at what preventative measures can be taken to prevent people using drugs in the first place and then the criminal market wouldn't exist for it and would just be a non issue as they wouldn't be able to force people to take drugs. The economic situations of impoverished areas, bad education, absent fathers and all of these possible reasons need to be addressed and just legalising it as a cure for the crime associated with it is frankly a RIDICULOUS SUGGESTION. Tell me, is your concern with the crime stats themself or what they represent? Because what they represent are deaths associated with the gang rivalries. If however drugs were legalised, the death rate in general relating to drugs would rise as more people would start using them as the natural business philosophies of most, I e sell what can make a profit, will apply and there will be plenty of companies trying to flog it, just like they sell cigarette and like cigarettes people will begin to freely use it to either look cool, to be like their friends or Simply because they can now try it and the effect will be catastrophic and you want it legalised? You're a complete clown.

Products of their labour? It's ONE SIZED DRINK THAT THEY CAN'T SELL, it's hardly taking away any business' primary source of income and in fact if businesses were smart and had any sense, they would find ways to negate the adverse financial impact that losing the right to sell these drinks has caused them by either increasing prices of other products or using the extra capital that they now have which previously would have gone on the extra sized drinks to find a way to innovate and make a profit some other way.

OR, they could just stop being greedy bastards and accept that they'll make a few less millions each year, boo hoo. It demonstrates empathy as the Government are fully aware that people have innate psychological tendencies that they have no control over and in fact businesses capitalise on that, with a full understanding that people won't be able to resist buying a super large drink if its just a fraction more expensive than a small sized drink.

Therefore, intervening and helping prevent the manifestation of the natural flaws of many people is morally correct and neccesary in fact. It's not even about weakness, it's about the marketing ploys and natural reactions to certain things that people have no control over and the proof of this will come when people do not buy two regular sized drinks to compensate for the lesser amount of sugar they can now have in a single cup. Simple as, don't try and refute this because its simply true, don't try and be smart.

It's preventing it for children IN THE FUTURE WHEN THEY BECOME ADULTS.

If a law is enacted now, it might cause contempt by the people who are directly affected by it at present but ultimately they will die and a new generation will be the beneficiaries of a law that was enacted long before they were born.

It's like saying that any regulations that were made in 1850 which were good for society as a whole were bad as they annoyed the people at the time, but if said law hadn't been implemented, us humans now would still be suffering from the consequences of it. Either way, people now will not significantly be opposed to this as like I said, they drink these drinks simply because they are available at a price that retailers know they can't resist at a subconscious level so it's a non issue now anyway.

It's not about contempt for the citizenry, stop sounding like a posh **** for one moment and understand that people can't help but exhibit tendencies that are innate to them, it's not a conscious thing. Do you understand this? The field of psychology is clearly alien to you so stop commenting on things that are intrinsically related to it, it's embarrassing.

If they're weak it's their problem? God, you sound like such a **** its unreal. That's like saying that we should never seek to help people Simply because they are weak. If someone responds badly to abuse athat others can handle, if she's considered weak should we just leave her be and let her deal with it or should we try to help her? Just stop talking, it seems like a good idea to me.

No what's pathetic is everything that you have wrote when you clearly have a huge misunderstanding of why this law is being enacted.

i must be an idiot if i'm still having this argument, but fine, i'll indulge your nonsense for a while longer. portugal hasn't legalised drugs but it has decriminalised them, and both drug use and crime have since decreased. whether decriminalisation or legalisation are the better option is up for debate, but one of those is desperately needed at all costs.
an important false dichotomy is that of referring to drugs as something separate from cigarettes and alcohol, which i wouldn't expect from someone who started this debate with a comparison between sugar and cocaine. nicotine and alcohol ARE drugs, they're both legal, heavily taxed, quality controlled, and carry a certain stigma with it. incidentally, both alcohol and tobacco producers have been heavily lobbying against looser drug laws, because that would cut into their profits.
i would argue that all cannabis (which is proven safer than alcohol and nicotine) being a class B drug does (besides overloading the justice system with unnecessary cases) is decrease the respect people have for the legal system. it doesn't at all curb the use of the drug. in fact, it's a fact that marijuana consumption amongst teens in the US exceeds the consumption of cigarettes, and it is equally proven that it is easier for a US teenager to score weed than buy a beer (which proves your response to Evangelica's point about age wrong)
do you honestly believe that confiscated cash even funds the part of the budget of the police force and the legal system which goes towards unnecessary drug cases, let alone exceeds the tax revenue the government would have if drugs became legal?
" The economic idiosyncrasies of their areas, which can often differ substantially from the wider economy as a whole and mostly do, a lack of role models, bad education, all of these things need to be addressed and solved and that's where the money should be going, not on ****ing legalising drugs." - again, false dichotomy - obviously drug use can be curbed with proper education policies and more balanced mental health support systems, etc., but in the medium to long run, no money will go on legalising drugs, quite the opposite.
finally, moving away from practicalities and into the moral debate, why is it morally horrible to believe that people should have control over their own bodies? if they harm themselves given the freedom to do so, they are merely exercising their free will. it may backfire and result in health issues, but so do cigarettes, lack of exercise, etc. do you want a police state forcing people to live healthy? how is that not morally reprehensible?

if i were to start a post saying abortion is wrong and if you agree with it being legal, then you might as well legalise killing live infants, then even if i didn't have an arguer at that point, it would still be straw-manning. and you can let people know what you think while at the same time spouting fallacies. so yeah, very brave of you to defend him, but you're wrong.

PS. "Actually If there was a huge tax put on them and they became really expensive then they would still be sold illegally by criminals looking to pander to customerss who want the drugs at a cheaper price, which they can clearly offer because they do right now. So that's a bit of a non argument right there. Also, she didn't actually buy the drugs and direct purchase of drugs isn't how she got them anyway."
yeah, like the increased tax on cigarettes and alcohol resulted in a huge amount of moonshine and homegrown tobacco going around. oh wait...
and even if she hadn't bought drugs, if they had been legal, they could've been more difficult to acquire for the party by whoever did.

Look at you, making up things about how people are to justify what even YOU said was probably a weak post with counter arguments, just because its me, the thread's apparent enemy refuting what you said. Ok let me get to this. Firstly it's not about whether they are illegal or not, it's about what people will think because of something that you did. If anything, the police will be more unsympathetic to a person who risked her family's life by smoking a cigarette and falling asleep than a teen at a party who took a few pills, I e what they expect. Secondly, seeing as how you based your argument on the case of this one girl, who are you to say that she personally would have felt differently about seeking treatment If the drugs were merely illegal for people her age? Also, like I said most people would not have done nothing and would have gone to seek help. It's an unfortunate thing to happen but it's such an anomaly that we shouldn't be considering changing whole laws because of this, It's not a common occurrence hence it's Inclusion in the news, unlike say 'man gets pissed on Friday night' which wouldn't make any papers. You can't think of anyone whose got high and got family called? That's because getting high doesn't severely Inhibit your ability to practically do anything useful like getting home, it just gives you a bit if a giddy feeling for a bit and then dies down.

It's not really subjective tbh, you're being ignorant enough to assume that youngsters will be able to be educated properly about the harms of drugs and will respond to that education by not taking them, but you're just underestimating how a lot of teenagers are. You're just being incredibly vague by saying 'give them education' which hasn't worked to curb teen pregnancies, teens smoking and teens getting hammered and there's no reason why it would work for drugs aswell, like you said there is a stigma attached to them for a lot of people which would naturally go once they become legal, even if only for adults, and many would then decide to give it a go and the consequences of this will clearly outweigh the negative effects that arise each year from people taking bad drugs.

Well if the Government matched the dealers' prices then you've just gone and negated your argument about how super high taxes will put people off using them as it won't because it will obviously be the sàme price as before. Also you made a silly analogy to moonshine and shoe polish as things like counterfeit cigarettes, I e things marketed as being the same thing and not a weird variant, do sell and they sell quite a lot and of course there the underlying fear that they won't be as safe as any fags sold in the shops but If people get a good price then you'd be surprised at what risks they're willing to take. If it was for drugs, they would already know, If we're considering that many current drug users will have been in the governments' mind when implementing their legalisation, and these people would already have tried many times the illegally sold drugs with no bad effect, or only the effect that drugs cause virtue of their innate lethality and if they were significantly cheaper (and were assuming most of these drug takers aren't super rich) then they would still go for them if they were available, just like many people would and do g for counterfeit cigarettes if they are available and cheap. So either, like you suggested the prices would have to be the same as the one that the illegal market sells them for in which case everyone who got them and was at risk of buying them still will or you increase their price and people just go to the illegal market.

Look you're just wrong, I don't want to insult you but I'd you're going to reply then reply to every point I made or don't bother, neg me and move on.

Looks like your advice has been taken

Sometimes, I simply reject Ronald Reagan's view that "government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem". Sometimes, the government knows best, and Mr Bloomberg believes this.

I've just got back today from two weeks out there, not New York but the South. You ask for a "small" and are presented with something that would be an super extra large here. Many of these yanks, simply have atrocious diets and the government has to change it, they will never change on their own.

There is unlikely to be more deaths; the war on drugs has spiraled horribly out of control and resulted in a much higher homicide and incarceration rate in the US (and to a lesser extent in the UK). Mexico has been devastated by it. The Taliban are funded by profits from illegal drug sales and people ally with them because they cannot make drug money in NATO-controlled territory.



I don't expect the death rate due to drugs to rise; addiction is largely a problem which stems from genetics and the addiction rate has barely changed since the war on drugs started. But more importantly, if drugs were legal the companies selling them could be easily regulated and the drugs themselves would be cleaner thus reducing the amount of secondary diseases they cause (like HIV from shared needles). One is unlikely to die from methanol poisoning after consuming alcohol today, but that was a real threat during alcohol prohibition.

In addition, if drugs were legal the money from enforcement could be used for healthcare, and for discouraging drug use without threatening people -as they have done for cigarettes.

Finally, legalizing drugs would give us more freedom.



I was referring to the fact that you could FINE people for selling a ****ing drink. You would confiscate the products of their labour for taking part in a completely voluntary transaction which doesn't even affect you; that is immoral.



It's easy to tell people to lose millions of dollars when you've never even had that amount to begin with. A million dollars is a ****load of money; losing that for selling a drink to someone is awful, and threatening to shut down someone's business if they sell such a drink is reprehensible.



But people do have control. I hate to break to you, but they are sentient agents capable of weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of the choices they make. They don't need you to police them, they don't need to be their mother.



Right, so it isn't preventing it for children. It's preventing it for grown men in the future.



Oh good, so now the objective is to make it a normal part of life that politicians treat us like children all the time and insist on babying us. Wonderful - I can hardly wait.



Give an example of an 1850 regulation that benefits us today. The only 1850 regulation I can think of is the Fugitive Slave Act, which was a pretty horrible regulation.



"It's not about being contemptuous you uneducated oaf! It's about preventing your feeble mind from making poor choices!" - this about sums up your argument here right? If any third parties want to comment on my assessment then I'd appreciate your input, but that's all I was able to take away from that.



Wow, you're comparing buying a soft drink to abuse? Really? What I'm saying is that if someone can't resist the urge to buy a smaller drink then I don't care what the result of that decision is - they're an adult and they can make their own choices. That's a hell of a lot different from saying that I don't care if someone is being abused and is unable to fight back; I do care about such things otherwise I'd be okay with the war on drugs. Escaping abuse is a hell of a lot different from buying a smaller drink.



It's being enacted because some do-gooders think they can improve our health by restricting our freedom. I oppose it because I don't want them to have that kind of power; I don't want my freedom restricted unless my freedom directly conflicts someone else's.

You're overestimating the capabilities of people and vastly underestimating the power that the subconscious and natural urges have on people and its these urges which are not governed by sentient reasoning so stop acting as if they are. If someone is at the cinema and they are offered a superrrr large drink for 3 pounds and a small one for £2.50, even if they went in with the intention of getting the small one and know that they should, they will near enough always go for the large one. Outside influences have a greater effect on a lot of people than what they know to be right and if you can't understand that, then stop debating on it. CLEARLY people haven't weighed up the advantages of their decisions in America as they're near enough all obese to a much higher proportion than anywhere in the world and why is that? It's because their portion sizes far exceed any other counties and this is clearly having a bad effect on them and if portion size were the same in Britain, we'd be the same too as people don't really differ across national borders in any significant ways. So basically, stop talking a Load of **** in the name of anti Government propaganda and get back to reading your BNP material.

oh god how will i get my litre of full fat coke now?!

There's so much crap in that paragraph. I was going to respond to the rest of your post but I just have to say **** you for implying that I support the BNP. Seriously, are you so horrendously ****ing stupid that you can't understand the difference between liberalism, which is what I support, and Nazism, which is what they support? How can you be so dense, and how can you have such contempt for people when you literally equate "more freedom and less government" with "kill the Jews, turn the government into a totalitarian dictatorship"?

there is no fat in coke

HHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/9542445/New-York-bans-large-sugary-drinks.html

What are your thoughts on this? Personally I think it's a good idea as I don't think that people would generally compensate for not having large drinks by buying two regular sized ones (which would cost more than the large one on its own did, it always is) and so they might just settle with what they can buy and hopefully lose some weight.

??