14 DAY TRIAL // Towards the beginning of March, New York Mayor Michal Bloomberg argued that his soft drink ban should be implemented statewide. As it turns out, not only will this ban not end up targeting areas outside NYC, but it will not come into effect at all.
This is because one state judge has recently decided to go against this otherwise highly innovative soft drinks policy and invalidate it on account of its packing quite a lot of loopholes.
As reported, Mayor Bloomberg's soft drinks ban was meant to keep people from buying soda cans whose volume exceeded 16 ounces by no longer allowing restaurants, movie theaters and other similar business to market them.
Still, the ban did nothing to prevent people from buying two 8-ounces cans of soda instead of a 16-ounces one, and only took into consideration businesses kept a close eye on by the city's health department.
Because of this, New York Supreme Court Judge Milton Tingling eventually came to the conclusion that, “The loopholes in this rule effectively defeat the state purpose of the rule.”
Ironically enough, Judge Milton Tingling invalidated the soft drinks ban just one day prior to the date at which the policy was supposed to take effect.
Thus, the Judge's decision was made public on March 11, whereas the ban was supposed to be implemented on March 12. Sources say that, when asked to comment on Judge Milton Tingling's ruling against his soft drinks ban, Mayor Michael Bloomberg made the following statements:
“We believe the judge is totally in error in how he interpreted the law, and we are confident we will win on appeal. One of the cases we will make is that people are dying every day. This is not a joke. Five thousand people die of obesity every day in America.”
Just for the record, a recent poll showed that about 51% of all New Yorkers did not approve of this ban, whereas 46% admitted to supporting it.