TUESDAY, July 30, 2013 — A New York State appeals court upheld the ruling blocking New York City’s large soda ban. The ruling stated that in attempting to limit the size of sugared beverages, the New York City Board of Health had gone beyond the legal bounds of its authority.
A unanimous panel of New York State’s Appellate Division upholds a decision given by the state’s Supreme Court in March, which was the first road block to Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to ban large sodas in the city, and was passed down mere hours before the ban had been scheduled to take effect. The New York Supreme Court’s block countered the city’s Board of Health’s support of the ban, which approved it in September.
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More than 2,000 New Yorkers have died from the effects of obesity since the March 12 block on the ban, Bloomberg said in a statement. Obesity has also been classified as a disease by the American Medical Association in the months since the decision, Bloomberg wrote, adding that he sees the decision as "a temporary setback."
The ban originally attempted to limit soda and sugar-sweetened beverages to sizes less than 16 ounces. The proposal has been controversial since Bloomberg first proposed the idea. In October, a coalition of industry associations filed a petition against the ban, and eventually sued the city. They claimed the ban not only hurt consumers' rights, but that it would hurt small businesses more than it could help improve New Yorkers' health.
The city will continue to appeal the case through the state’s courts, according to a statement by Michael Cardozo,corporation counsel for the city. "There is a broad precedent for the Board of Health to adopt significant measures to protect New Yorkers' public health," Cardozo said in the statement.
When the proposal was originally overturned in March, Eric Rimm, ScD, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, expressed disappointment that the ban had been invalidated.
“I’m sure it’s the lobbying of the beverage industry that has won out,” he said to Everyday Health at the time. “It’s a loss for public health.”
Bloomberg’s proposal is meant to take a stab at the obesity epidemic that continues to put New Yorkers at high risk for health complications that include diabetes and heart disease. The plan limited the size of beverages sold in restaurants and movie theaters, as well as limiting the number of sugar packets added to coffee beverages to five. Some convenience stores, including 7-Eleven, would have been able to skirt the ban by qualifying as a grocery store. The ban didn’t limit free refills, or consumer’s ability to add their own sugar to coffee, and beverages that were mostly milk were exempt.
In defending their position, petitioners accepted the seriousness of the obesity epidemic, but disputed that there is a clear link between obesity and sugary beverages. In a statement today, Bloomberg pointed to a recent New England Journal of Medicine study that outlined the "deadly, and irreversible, health impacts of obesity and Type 2 diabetes – both of which are disproportionately linked to sugary drink consumption."
(www.everydayhealth.com)
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