PureX
Well-known member
I think the solution to this problem lies elsewhere from this foolish proposed ban. The proposed ban is just not workable. And I think it's also inappropriate. And yet the problem remains.I think it raises a lot of questions, mostly having to do with the age a child matures. I don't think they all mature at the same time, so you are left with trying to figure out at which age can a person decide to have a soft drink. Do you choose 13, 16, 18, or 21? Maybe some more nonsensical number?
That is the issue with making something into a crime that requires arbitrary limitations. It's far easier I believe to educate parents about the dangers of it and have them make the decision about when the child has matured enough to be able to handle something.
We also have to face the reality of things. Making it to where a child can't get public access to something doesn't remove the ability to get private access. Just because the law says you have to be 21 to buy alcohol, that never stopped my family from giving it to me long before then. So you are taking a lot of money to institute legislation on this when in the end nothing will change.
I see both as being more about individual rights. An embryo or fetus is human and is developing. I believe it is an individual and I don't believe the course of nature should be altered in the case of life. I apply that principal to war and such as well. So once a person is mature enough to be able to understand their choice about what to put in their body, let them make it. It's two completely different things here, it seems. One is about a life and death matter, one is just about a substance.
I think we need, as a society, to grow up and start taking responsibility for our behaviors. Not just in terms of watching what we eat and drink, but also in terms of what we manufacture and try to sell to people. If we can preach to the public about how they need to be responsible for their own health, then we can just as easily and reasonably preach to the manufacturers of food and drink that they need to be responsible for what they are trying to sell to us.
As it stands, they are getting away with selling a horrible array of unhealthy food and drink products. The world will surely not come to an end if we were to place some serious limits on these products, both in terms of their volume and their content, as well as their advertising.
The more we worship commerce as though it were sacrosanct, the more unhealthy and difficult our lives are becoming. We need to put and end to this idea that commerce is sacred and uncontrollable. It's not. The purpose of commerce is to serve the humans who are engaged in it, and NOT the other way around.