CT Gov Rell Kow Tows to Big Cola on Junk Food

If you were told that the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Preventive Medicine, the American Diabetes Foundation, the American Heart Association-Connecticut Chapter, The Center for Science in the Public Interest, the Connecticut PTA, The Connecticut State Dental Association, the Connecticut Nurses Association, the YWCA, and 70% of the adult residents of the state of Connecticut were all in favor of a particular bill, you would probably wonder who could possibly be against it.  

The bill that these organizations supported and that, according to a March, 2005 poll by the University of Connecticut's Center for Research and Analysis, was favored by 70% of Connecticut residents, would have banned soft drinks and other junk food from public schools across the state.  Who opposed it?  Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Republican Governor M. Jodi Rell, and most of the state's Republican legislators.  

To counteract overwhelming popular support for the bill (S.B. 1309), "Big Cola" hired the state's two most powerful lobbying firms, Sullivan & LeShane and Gaffney Bennett, and spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to kill it.  Although it passed the General Assembly with strong Democratic support, Governor Rell vetoed the measure.  Governor Rell must have taken special note of the views of lobbyist Patricia LeShane, who not only serves as a high-powered lobbyist for Coca-Cola, but also as the governor's campaign advisor.  Of course, according to Governor Rell, she never discussed the issue with Ms. LeShane (read: "I didn't inhale.").

The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that soda should not be sold in schools-period.  Why?  Because numerous studies have linked the sharp increase in the consumption of soda by teens with soaring rates of teenage obesity.  Soft drink companies know very well that placing soft drink vending machines in schools tells kids that drinking soda is OK and gets them used to high-calorie drinks as part of their normal diet.  According to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), drinking soda instead of milk or calcium-fortified beverages increases the risk of osteoporosis later in life, particularly in women.  Overweight and obese teens are developing type-2 diabetes at sharply increasing rates, a disease that was once rare in kids.  Lucy Nolan, executive director of End Hunger Connecticut!, states that "soda is bad not only for what it provides kids, but for what it takes away.  Hardly any kids are getting enough calcium, vitamins, fiber, vegetables, or fruit.  The more soda you drink, the less of those you get."  

Greenwich, Connecticut's three Republican state representatives, Lile Gibbons, Dolly Powers and Livvy Floren complained that the bill would have infringed on local control of education. Yet, according to Robert Zavoski, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics-Connecticut Chapter, "allowing junk food to be sold in school doesn't give decision-making to parents- it takes it away."  If 100% fruit juices, water, milk and diet beverages were substituted for soft drinks in vending machines and school snack bars, parents would be better able to control their children's intake of sodas and sugary junk foods.  So where is this support for "local community control" coming from regarding the junk food ban?  According to Joy Johanson, senior policy associate with CSPI, "it is not coming from parents or even particularly from local school authorities, it's coming from Coke."  "Local control" is the fig leaf that Big Cola urges legislators across the country to hide behind when voting to oppose soft drink bans.  And this is a nation-wide movement, with twenty four states considering bills to ban soft drinks and junk food from public schools this year alone.  Indeed, while Governor Rell was exercising her veto, New Jersey was adopting just such a ban that will be fully implemented by 2007.

Governor Rell stated that she opposed the state's imposing another unfunded mandate.  Yet the ban on soft drinks and other junk foods in the schools was anything but an unfunded mandate.  In fact, unlike the Bush Administration's under-funded mandate "No Child Left Behind," which is costing state taxpayers millions more dollars than they receive from Washington, this bill would not have entailed any additional costs.  On the contrary, in the long run the bill would have saved our state billions.  Every year the state of Connecticut spends over $665 million through Medicare and Medicaid for the treatment of obesity-related illnesses.  The Center for Disease Control estimates that we spend $93 billion dollars nationally every year on obesity treatment.  

Big Cola won this round; our children lost.  We need to implement a junk food ban in the Constitution State's public schools as soon as possible.  And we need to make sure that Governor Rell and the state's Republican legislators understand that our youth's health is more important than pleasing Big Cola.