Should sugar become the new tobacco?

This headline, which popped up in one of the regular e-mail newsletters I get, sent me off on a tangent.

Does this mean we need designated "candy-eating" areas that are 50 feet from entrances to schools and other public buildings? 

What's your take on the headline? Let's write the story for them--I'm sure it will be much more interesting than the other one, which was all about diabetic fruit flies. 

Comments, below, please.    Jeanne

Comments

[Susan]

I'm not advocating for smoking in any way. There is nothing healthy about smoking.

I do wonder about smoking rates because they have declining for years now. There aren't nearly the smokers there were 20-30 years ago.

If smoking is so bad (and I think it is), why are cancer rates rising?

[Jeanne]

Other causes of cancer besides smoking? Environmental/food pollution is the answer, I think.

[Susan]

I think about environmental and food pollution. I wish I had been feeding my family organically all along. Every time I think about all the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese I fed them, I cringe

I didn't phrase my previous comment very well and now I can't figure out what I was trying to say! It definitely wasn't "if you don't smoke, you won't get cancer" and that's exactly how it came across.

[Teri]

We will be paying lean food tax the way Oregon wants to add fuel tax to the efficient cars. Alcohol is taxed, tobacco is taxed, large drinks and some junk food are about to (or have been) taxed. When people don't consume as much and go healthier, money has to be made up somewhere.

[Maggie]

When I was a child, the dentist gave out lollipops for good behavior in the dentist's chair.

Nowadays I would probably call that entrapment ... or at least, job security.

I would welcome no-candy zones surrounding schools; probably we should also be declaring no-pizza zones. I suspect my grandkids would be healthier. But the sugar lobby would probably never permit it.