SNAP ban on soda aligns with public opinion

This week, during a “Great American Farmers Market,” United States Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins signed waivers allowing six states — West Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Louisiana, Oklahoma, and Texas — to restrict the use of SNAP benefits for soda and candy. These join six others — Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, and Utah — that have already had waivers signed this year.

The waivers usher in a new, if complicated, era in food policy. As states across the country, from Swig-guzzling Utah to the Mountain (Dew) state of West Virginia, adjust welfare purchasing categories, they highlight questions of health equity and personal responsibility and underscore a fascinating set of paradoxes that define the Trump era.