The Center for Consumer Freedom reports on bizarre goings-on in San Diego, where a plan to fight childhood obesity has spun into a kind of food authoritarianism:

On tap are truly galling calls for zoning restrictions on restaurants, “fat taxes,” advertising bans, shutting down drive-thrus, and even absurd odor controls to make food less enticing.

[...]

Ideas emanating from “experts” include “ordinances to limit access to fast food outlets and drive throughs during high school and junior high hours.” This might mean you literally could not go to a local drive-thru for lunch if there’s a school nearby. The “experts” also recommended classifying obesity as a “disease” and suggested that food makers control portion sizes to conform to government standards.

The draft report includes some far-out proposals from members of the community. Perhaps the most troubling idea would “change fast food’s image to one of danger.” Another strategy, apparently designed to prevent people from even thinking about food, would create odor-control ordinances to punish restaurants if the smell of their goods escaped their building.

As I undestand it, none of this stuff has passed. Yet. But that it’s not being laughed out of the discussion is troubling enough.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 23rd, 2005 at 4:41 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.