"Is Coca-Cola the new cigarette? Soda industry fight looking a lot like cigarette industry one over past decades"
For the health nannies and technocrats, the "answer is plainly 'yes.'" But so is most any "fatty food" or beverage these days. My fellow bloggers, as shown in the blogroll at right, have been saying for years that the nannies will not stop at tobacco -- they will go after alcohol and fast food, and perhaps even sleeping.
The Yahoo! article goes on to say:
"With new packaging and calorie cutting, it's hard not to see a similarity between the soft drink industry now and the cigarette industry from a few decades ago. When studies began to show the negative effects of smoking, the industry fought it with a number of court battles, arguing they had no part in the death of people who smoked."
And so it now goes with the fizzy drinks industry. Can I just say to you, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, that now would be a very good time to speak out against plain packaging for cigarettes. They are coming for you next, and you can deny that all you'd like and pretend it won't happen, but you are now just as evil and life-destroying as tobacco companies in the minds of the nannying tyrants. Voluntarily agreeing to reformulate your products so that they contain fewer calories is the first step in capitulating to the health movement that seeks to destroy you. Remember when cigarette companies were forced to create "light" cigarettes with less tar due to government intervention? What happened then? Tobacco control later decided that light cigarettes were deceptive and attacked the tobacco companies for that. Next up will be warning labels for your soft-drink products, showing grotesquely obese children, rotting teeth and diseased organs -- these warnings on your soft drinks are coming. These warnings will not work. They will be ignored just as they are on tobacco products. And the nannies will insist that to protect our gullible children and adults that the "answer is plain." It is coming for you. Do not act surprised when it happens.
Back in the late 70s early 80s, my mother and step-father already knew that moderation was important in respect of sweet soft drinks like Coca-Cola. The issue then was not its caloric content, rather it was "caffeine." So, my parents did not allow us to drink Coke or Pepsi very often, perhaps once every few weeks if even that, in very small amounts. At some point, somebody had mistakenly informed my parents that a particular fizzy drink had no caffeine, so my parents bought some of it and brought it home. They never checked to see if the drink truly was caffeine-free. They relaxed the fizzy drinks rule a little to one per day, because that drink was OK for kids, and my brother and I were very excited. Except it wasn't OK. At the dinner table one night, I read the ingredients list on the can and proudly announced to everyone that our drinks did have caffeine, at which point my parents stood up, took our drinks away from us, emptied them into the sink and duly served us water instead. My brother didn't talk to me for weeks, he was very angry. I think he's still angry over that one.
Anyway, if you drink 8 litres of Coke per day, like that woman who recently died, there are going to be negative consequences because of your habit. I said, "habit," not "addiction." Once upon a time, smoking was considered a habit. When nicotine replacement therapies arrived in the early 80s, the pharmaceutical companies replaced the word "habit" with "addiction" and the result of that clever word swap haunts all of us to this day. Smokers, they tell you now, are full-blown addicts, considered more or less the same as dangerous heroin junkies begging or stealing to scrape up enough change for their daily fix, and utterly unable to quit even when they want to do so. Something must be done to stop this horrible smoking addiction! And guess what, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, nothing you do will be good enough to sate the nannies' desire to keep everyone safe from themselves. Something will be done to stop you from harming the public, in the name of protecting the children. And gullible adults. Because we're all stupid according to the technocrats.
Oh, they have got your number now, Coke and Pepsi. The media will not side with you, either. You could join us in the fight, but you won't because you are worried about your image, which is getting worse each passing day. So good luck, and nice knowing you.
H/T: J Johnson on Twitter
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| Say goodbye to your advertising, Coke. Image: Wikipedia Commons |
