The mayor of New York does not believe that a willing buyer in search of a 32-ounce soft drink and a willing seller of the same should be allowed to make the deal. This, in a city that is famous for deals that involve quite a bit more than a few pints of sugar water and do a whole lot more societal damage. But never mind. People may have gone bust when Lehman went toes up, but nobody got obese as a result of its over-indulging in credit default swaps.

And that’s the objective here. One we should not lose sight of. This marshmallow totalitarianism is a necessary governmental response to the crisis of obesity. Part of what will inevitably become a “War on Sugar.” The people who are enthralled by state power are always looking for a new crusade and never deterred by the fact that a previous one didn’t turn out so well.  We had, for instance, a great big war on drugs and that one now seems to have settled into a sullen sort of stalemate.  Drugs are still the enemy, we still support a huge war-making apparatus, and willing sellers and buyers of illegal drugs can still easily find each other anywhere in the land.