Disagree.
Why?
Lots of reasons:
This law is the same logic as the sugar tax. If you oppose the soda/juice tax than you should also oppose this.
How are you going to define "junk food"? Answer: you can't. Someone somewhere is going to find a way to argue that what you deem as junk food isn't really junk food. There is an entire lobbyist industry dedicated to this. They will find ways to repackage and relabel things to skirt the system. In the end it will be a transfer of taxpayer wealth not to people who need to eat, but lobbyist and food package designers. Case in point, you aren't supposed to buy convenience foods with EBT. Go into any Kroger and what do you see? Convenience foods chilled with the EBT eligible sticker slapped on it.
They already tried imposing government mandated healthy eating by overhauling the school lunch program. They put "healthier" options in front of kids and the kids chose not to eat it. Instead they created "black markets" for the food they did want
EBT abuse is already rampet. You see cases all the time of shop owners accepting food stamps for items not covered, but at exorbitant prices. This won't be any different
So, Basically for all the same reasons 2Aers use to defend why banning guns won't work and all the reasons stoners advocate why banning pot won't work. It's not solving the issue.
Also, three years ago MY family was on food stamps. My husband had cancer and we were financially ruined. I KNOW what it's like to be on food stamps. 90% of the bitching on here is nonsense.
I'm not 100% familiar with the sugar tax. The one from the UK? That's what a web search came up with.
You would have to define junk food. It could be done via the nutritional content of the food, that way repacking would not be effective. Soda would be easy, that is already defined. I'm sure Kroger isn't breaking the law. I don't have one by me so I dunno exactly what foods they are. Like a rotisserie chicken? Those are actually a good value, even though it could be since as a prepaired food under the law. However why would be disallow a purchase of a food like that, but allow candy bars?
I'm not sure how the school lunch attempt applies here. I was never for that, it ended up in a lot of food being thrown out.
Current EBT abuse isn't a reason for disliking this. However maybe more of an effort should be made to clamp down on that current abuse, or perhaps we need a more fundamental program change. I'm not a fan of EBT at all, why not change it to a voucher system, where it is very clear what you can get with each voucher.
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