Thursday, June 01, 2006

SERIOUSLY INSANE BRITAIN

The first thing I was told as a trainee reporter was to write in the inverted pyramid, putting the most important part of the story on top. This story about today's British policing, political correctness and crime-control has several parts, but I am unsure which is the most (or least) important. They occurred within a short time of each other and are typical of the bizarre combination of Draconian punishments for minor offenses against political correctness and permissive or weak treatment of serious criminality characteristic of Britain today. The first was brought to public attention by Ann Widdecombe, a former Conservative Home Office Minister in charge of Prisons and a Privy Councillor.

A former North Wales police officer of 22 years standing, John Atkinson, referred to a senior police officer as a "dyke." He had apparently been upset by the officer refusing to commiserate with him at a funeral over the death of his son. It was, as Miss Widdecombe said, a vulgar expression, but vulgarity is not normally a crime. He might have been told to mind his language and go home. Instead, he claims, six officers arrested him, handcuffed him, and bundled him into a van.

According to Mr. Atkinson, he was then locked in a cell, stripped naked, and left all night with only a blanket. There were no sanitary arrangements and he was forced to urinate in a corner of the cell, nor was he given any water, though prisoners are legally entitled to these things. While he was still naked the police proposed to interview him. When he protested he was handed back his clothes soaked in urine, which he was told had leaked under the cell door.

This was not, it seems a matter of unofficial horseplay among police getting out of hand, or of police settling some sort of grudge or quarrel among themselves by rough but informal methods. He was formally charged with threatening, abusive and insulting behavior and taken to court, though when the matter was brought before a magistrate the charges were thrown out.

A few days after this it was reported that a Bedfordshire farmer and former churchwarden, Frank Cook, fired a shotgun, not to kill, but to frighten, a dog threatening his lambs. He was standing on his lawn with his two grandchildren aged 3 and 5 shortly after when six police cars roared up and dozens of police poured out, five of them armed.

Mr. Cook, 77 years old and suffering from high blood pressure, claims he was forced into an armlock in front of his family, handcuffed, sworn at, and bundled into a police car. He was then locked in a cell for five hours, finger-printed and photographed and forced to give a DNA sample. He claims that at one point police pointed a gun at his son, who photographed him being arm-locked (the photograph was printed in the British press). He had previously reported two burglaries with no action being taken.

On the other hand, more than 1,000 major offenders of foreign nationality, including murderers, rapists, kidnappers, other violent criminals and people-smugglers, who would have been eligible for deportation, were released from prison and no record was kept of their whereabouts. In about 160 of these cases the sentencing judges had specifically recommended that they be deported at the end of their sentences. There were previous cases reported shortly before this came to light of foreign criminals recommended for deportation who were subsequently freed committing further crimes including murder and rape.

Sir David Normington, the civil service head of the Home Office, said the situation had actually deteriorated since the Home Office was alerted to the problem last August, with about 40 foreign prisoners being released and "lost" every month since then compared to about 14 a month before.

While huge efforts are put into enforcing political correctness (a police task-force was reported investigating a cartoon of Mohammed put up on a notice-board in a private office, blaming it on dangerous "extremists," and undercover police have been sent in "Operation Napkin" ready to arrest patrons committing such racist hate-crimes as mimicking the accents of staff or asking for flied lice), in many ways the state seems astonishingly weak, and not just because of big increases over the last few years in every type of violent crime. In 2004, about 20 Chinese illegal immigrants were drowned picking cockles (small edible shellfish) when caught by the tide on the mudflats at Morecambe Bay in northwest England. It appeared an entire illegal industry -- not only picking the cockles but also processing them and distributing them for sale -- had been set up with none of the relevant regulatory authorities (immigration, police, local council, fisheries, conservation, coast-guard etc.) noticing or caring. While lethally dangerous situations like this are allowed to develop, absurd local regulations ban children's snowball fights and other kindergarten games.

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THE INCORRECTNESS OF THE MILITARY

I cannot remember the last time I read a newspaper story about an Iraq War hero, nor can I recall seeing modern American soldiers portrayed heroically in film or on television. But there is no shortage of U.S. soldiers being described as evil or as weak, incompetent, pathetic pawns -- in all three mediums.

Though most of today's media is quick to fawn over anti-military frauds like Jimmy Massey and Cindy Sheehan, it almost never mentions, no less praises, righteous men like Marine Sergeant Rafael Peralta and Medal of Honor winner Sergeant First Class Paul Smith, whose heroic deeds are worthy of high-profile, honest depiction in print and on screen.

The press gives little notice to combat veterans who speak positively of their military experiences, or how those experiences helped them attain successful careers or perform extraordinary deeds in their civilian lives.

Instead, it and Hollywood endlessly pummel us with tales of U.S. soldiers going hungry, or lacking body armor or killing civilians in the heat of battle, or killing civilians for fun, or committing torture, or ending up on Skid Row; bitter and broken. Such stories of our fighting men and women have become as common as leftwing journalists.

Witness a recent Reuters article -- one so disingenuous, so dishonest and so full of deceptions that it reeks of the anti-military bias that permeates the Old Media, through and through. And in a classic case of the leftwing choir preaching to its self, the piece is now being trumpeted by far-Left blogs and websites as "proof" of the U.S. Military's incompetence, callousness and overall wretchedness. Written by Daniel Trotta, and titled, "Some Iraq war vets go homeless after return to US," the piece profiles Vanessa Gamboa, an Army veteran who returned from Iraq facing a rocky transition back to civilian life.

While in Iraq, Gamboa worked in logistics, but nevertheless had a single, brief combat experience during which no one was injured. Reuters uses Gamboa's brush with violence to insinuate that our soldiers are poorly trained incompetents--used up by the military and then discarded. The article begins on that note:

"The nightmare of Iraq was bad enough for Vanessa Gamboa. Unprepared for combat beyond her basic training, the supply specialist soon found herself in a firefight, commanding a handful of clerks.

'They promoted me to sergeant. I knew my job but I didn't know anything about combat. So I'm responsible for all these people and I don't know what to tell them but to duck,' Gamboa said.

The battle, on a supply delivery run, ended without casualties, and it did little to steel Gamboa for what awaited her back home in Brooklyn.

When the single mother was discharged in April, after her second tour in Iraq, she was 24 and had little money and no place to live. She slept in her son's day-care center.' Gamboa is part of a small but growing trend among U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- homelessness."


Sergeant Gamboa left the U.S. Army nearly broke? The U.S. military covers its active duty soldiers' room and board. In addition, it also pays its members a salary, based on rank. A buck private is paid approximately $1100 per month. A sergeant like Vanessa Gamboa makes nearly double that amount, before bonuses for combat, sea or hazardous duty. And since the military covers the cost of food, rent, clothes and utilities (in addition to providing comprehensive medical and dental care for its active duty members), it's theoretically possible for active duty personnel to bank nearly their entire pay.

Realistically though, many soldiers are young and enjoy a night out on the town, or treat themselves to a nice stereo or a fast car or motorcycle or an off-base dinner from time to time, so they'll spend at least some of their pay on frivolities. Nevertheless, it is easy to save money while on active duty -- if one is disciplined and responsible enough to do so.

Let's do a little math: Say that over the life of her (likely) four year enlistment, as she climbed in rank, Vanessa Gamboa averaged (conservatively) $1400 per month in base pay. (After the bills are paid and neccessities purchased, how many of us have $1400 to spend every month?) If Gamboa completed her 48 month-long enlistment, she grossed around $67,200 for an approximate after-tax take-home pay of $47,000. Let's say she was careful with her money, but not compulsively frugal with it, spending 25 per cent of her pay during her enlistment period.

In the above scenario, Sergeant Gamboa is discharged from the Army with a modest nest egg of approximately $35,280 (not counting her educational and other benefits.) But based on the weepy Reuters tale, Gamboa was discharged with nearly empty pockets.

Contrary to what Reuters implies, the homelessness greeting Vanessa Gamboa in Brooklyn was not the Army's fault, but a predictable, logical result of her failing to properly manage her finances. She bears direct responsibility for her predicament -- and the U.S. Army does not. In addition, Gamboa made the decision to have a child -- without having a husband. Reuters' reporting on Gamboa's plight, suspiciously mirrors the talking points of Marxist counter-recruitment groups like Not Your Soldier and the Communist-led Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors :

"Military recruiters target poor neighborhoods like Gamboa's Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. Young adults with few job skills join the Army. When they get out, many have fallen behind their contemporaries, experts say."

(Who are the "experts" that Reuters based its claims on?) Perhaps these. No matter -- the vast majority of veterans go on to lead productive, prosperous lives. To most ex- soldiers, the experience of having served their country has had a tangible, positive effect on them.

This fact is anathema to Old Media outlets like Reuters. They, like their leftist counter-recruitment cousins, are only interested in pushing a narrative that the military preys on the poor, that time spent in the service leads to poverty and personal failure, that serving one's country is a poor career choice, that military recruiters are racists and liars and that, by and large, the U.S. Military is nothing but a tool of the rich -- one used by them to further their evil- capitalist goals.

The Reuters article discusses homeless veterans. It states that there are currently 200,000 homeless veterans, mostly from the Vietnam era, living in the U.S. Most of those people are homeless due to alcoholism or mental illness. And though there is a broad support network to address their needs, one fact not mentioned by Reuters is central to understanding homelessness: No one in America can be forced, against their will, to attend counseling, or to live in a shelter or be forced into detox or be made to receive psychiatric help unless they harm someone other than themselves or have demonstrated the potential to do so. And that, not lack of funding, is the main reason that homeless people, veterans and non-veterans alike, remain on the street.

Unless that Catch-22 is successfully addressed, no amount of money thrown at the problem of homelessness will fix it. And if laws are passed making it mandatory for all homeless people to get help for their addictions and psychiatric illnesses, so-called "civil liberties" groups will cry "persecution," "discrimination" and a host of "isms." Soon afterwards, obstructive law suits will commence.

Based on the tone of the Reuters article on Vanessa Gamboa, one would conclude that homelessness among Iraq War II veterans is a widespread problem; an earmark of today's military service. But it's not. Even Reuters admits that, "On any given night the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) helps 200 to 250 of them, and more go uncounted." That's around 200-250 people, out of the many thousands who have so far served in Iraq and have reentered civilian life.

Homeless veterans have served their country, and their problems, (if service related), should be efficiently addressed by the Armed Forces. Our government must make good on that which it promises its soldiers -- (all of which is clearly spelled out in every enlistment contact) -- but it should never be required to serve as a welfare agency for people, like Sergeant Vanessa Gamboa, who make poor monetary or personal decisions or who do not adequately plan for their futures.

Reuters' biggest journalistic deception is its equating Sergeant Gamboa's difficulties with those of veterans suffering from combat-related maladies. Gamboa's problems resulted from her neglecting to plan ahead, which was probably rooted in the currently wide-held expectation that Big Government will automatically pay for one's poor decisions. Unlike Sergeant Gamboa though, almost all homeless veterans suffer from alcoholism or mental illness, whether combat related, or not. Unlike Gamboa's, their problems are generally not of their own making.

Be that as it may, the profound differences in the circumstances leading to Vanessa Gamboa's homelessness and those of other homeless vets, is of no significance to Reuters, since depictions of either can equally be used to smear the U.S. military and its current mission. And smearing the U.S. military and its current mission in Iraq, is one of the things that Old Media outlets like Reuters do best.

During World War II, American soldiers were saving the West from being sucked into the Black Hole of Nazism. American troops are now fighting to save the West from the equally noxious Islamism. But unlike today, the Greatest Generation's acts of bravery and sacrifice were trumpeted by the press and immortalized in film. More than 418,000 American soldiers died in that long, terrible war, but the overwhelming majority of those who returned got on with their lives and drove one of the most remarkable periods of prosperity and social vibrancy in America's history.

Our soldiers in Iraq and in Afghanistan are their equals. They are cut from the same cloth, raised in the same cradle of Liberty as American warriors past. They are smart, competent, well-equipped, well treated and, by and large, well led. But you'd never know that if you relied on Reuters, or the rest of the Old Media, for your news.

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EU DICTATORS NOW ATTACKING ALCOHOL

Those who will not learn of the past are condemned to repeat it

The campaigns to combat the effects of `passive smoking' are widely credited for Europe's growing number of smoking bans. Now alcohol is in the sights of the public health lobbyists, and they have invented the concept of `passive drinking' as their killer argument. I have seen a leaked draft report for the European Commission, which is due to be published some time in June. It makes claims about the high environmental or social toll of alcohol, the `harm done by someone else's drinking'. The report is likely to inform proposals for a European Union alcohol strategy later this year.

Dr Peter Anderson, the report's lead author, who has a background in the World Health Organisation (WHO) and plays a leading role in Tobacco Free Initiative Europe, tells me that the concept of social harm takes the alcohol debate beyond the traditional limits of individual choice and addiction. `You can make the argument that what an individual drinks is up to them, provided they understand what they are doing and bearing in mind that alcohol is a dependency-producing drug.. But when you talk about harm to others then that is a societal concern and justification for doing something about it. I think that is an important argument. If there was not harm to others then the argument gets a little less powerful'.

The draft report doesn't mince its words when it comes to estimating the social harms of alcohol. `The total tangible cost of alcohol to EU society in 2003 was estimated to be 125billion euros, equivalent to 1.3 per cent GDP, and which is roughly the same value as that found recently for tobacco.' The report further highlights the broader social cost of drinking, with the proviso that `these estimates are subject to a wide margin of error, [and] they are likely to be an underestimate of the true gross social cost of alcohol'. `The intangible costs show the value people place on pain, suffering and lost life that occurs due to the criminal, social and health harms caused by alcohol', says the report. `In 2003 these were estimated to be 270 billion euros, with other ways of valuing the same harms producing estimates between 150 billion and 760 billion.'

As Anderson indicates, emphasising the alleged social rather than individual consequences of alcohol will be key to the new campaign. The theme of `passive drinking' was flagged up early on. A Commission working group on alcohol health met in Luxembourg on 9 June 2004 to discuss, among other things, early progress on Anderson's report. Draft minutes note that the participants, EU and national officials and various experts, were on the hunt for `main reasons why there is a need to reduce alcohol-related harm'. `EU experts agreed that the strategy needed to show more clearly the facts concerning harm on third parties (both social and health), including children and other family members of persons with alcohol-related problems. Experts said that there, for information and pedagogic reasons, was a need for a good phrase to explain what we mean by third-party harm in the alcohol field - reference was made to the phrase "passive smoking".'

Just six days later, the Alcohol Policy Network (APN), a Commission-funded Eurocare project where Anderson is a staff member (4), met in Warsaw. Again, minutes show there was a strong consensus on the propaganda, or `advocacy', merits of finding an equivalent term to `passive smoking' for the alcohol debate. `The effect of alcohol on non-drinkers could be used more in advocacy. A need for effective terminology for this point was identified (eg. "passive drinking"), and APN members were invited to submit any suggestions they had in this regard'.

By October 2004, the theme was established in a Eurocare submission to the Commission. `Alcohol not only harms the user, but those surrounding the user, including the unborn child, children, family members, and the sufferers of crime, violence and drink-driving accidents: this can be termed environmental alcohol damage or "passive drinking".'

Dr Peter Anderson now distances himself a little from the term `passive drinking', while remaining true to the core idea. `Passive drinking as a term does not really work. Like you have environmental tobacco smoke, I suppose you could [talk about] environmental alcohol damage. I have used that term.but there may be a better way of doing it', he admits. In the draft report, the concept is intact. The report claims that as alcohol consumption, or `other people's' drinking, increases, so too does social harm. `Harms done by someone else's drinking range from social nuisances such as being kept awake at night through more serious consequences such as marital harm, child abuse, crime, violence and homicide. Generally the higher the level of alcohol consumption, the more serious is the crime or injury.'

Passive or environmental, the figures Anderson has pulled together for the EU are pretty scary. Drink is responsible for 2,000 homicides, four out of 10 of Europe's annual murders. `The economic cost of alcohol-attributable crime has been estimated to be 33 billion euros in the EU for 2003..while the intangible cost of the physical and psychological effects of crime has been valued at 9bn - 37bn.' Children, too, are passive victims of drinking. `Many of the harms caused by alcohol are borne by people other than the drinker responsible. This includes 60,000 underweight births, as well as 16 per cent of child abuse and neglect, and five to nine million children in families adversely affected by alcohol', says the report's summary.

But while arguments have raged over a causal relationship between alcohol and crime since the nineteenth century, evidence for a connection has remained thin. `Questions of how alcohol exerts its criminogenic influence have never been satisfactorily answered. [all that can be concluded is] alcohol does not directly cause crime but that it may be implicated indirectly', argues a study cited in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology.

The link made by campaigners between alcohol and crime today, whether violence or child abuse, follows not from hard facts but from a subjective outlook that sees human characteristics as damaging in general. And if human beings, particularly when under the influence of stimulants, are destructive, then, the argument goes, social intervention must follow. The idea that almost any activity - drinking, eating, speaking, even thinking - can cause harm is often blown out of proportion and used to generate frightening figures and policies.

Most violent crimes are committed by men; should males therefore be subject to special restrictive laws? Domestic violence mostly takes place in private homes; should privacy be abolished? Claiming that aspects of everyday life, such as drinking, automatically leads to `harm' takes away from the responsibility of individual lawbreakers for what they have done, and thus makes for bad policy. Should all 85 per cent of Europe's citizens who drink - that's at least 387 million of us - face restrictions because of the tiny minority who commit the 2,000 homicides dubiously attributed to alcohol?

In a twist of irony probably lost on po-faced public health types, the expression `passive drinking' seems to have originated as a spoof in two `Peter Simple' columns in the UK Daily Telegraph in 2002 and 2003, written by journalist Michael Wharton. Mocking the rise of nonsense research to justify social measures, he wrote about research work being carried out by `Dr Ron Hardware' at `Nerdley University'. `They were the first to discover the scourge of "passive drinking", showing by painstaking experiments and finely adjusted statistics that it was just as deadly as "passive smoking" and equally capable of causing cancer and innumerable other ills'.

Also, Soldier, `magazine of the British Army', generated some shock and awe with a prescient April's Fool story in 2006, about a looming booze ban to counter passive drinking. `This is another big brother idea taking in the problems of the minority and laying it squarely on the shoulders of the majority', wrote one outraged serviceman who didn't spot the joke. Today, it's no longer a joke - European officials are plotting to make `passive drinking' a reality.

Many of the ideas behind the latest European attempts to demonise drinking have much older, hoary antecedents. Some of the arguments and organisations involved go back to 1853. The Commission tender for the report went to the British Institute of Alcohol Studies (IAS), an organisation with close links to Alliance House, venerable temperance campaigners. This relationship has already raised some eyebrows. It epitomises the convergence between public health campaigners and old-style moralistic prohibitionists. Alliance House was founded in 1853 by Quaker cotton manufacturer Nathaniel Card to work for the prohibition of alcohol. Inspired by prohibition in the US, his campaign soon gathered momentum and the Alliance became a political force to be reckoned with. But, thankfully for us today, Card and his friends were critiqued by John Stuart Mill and other progressive humanists.

In 1857 - the year that Mill's classic essay On Liberty was published - the Alliance was not seeking outright prohibition of alcohol but rather was trying to establish key arguments about the social harm of drinking. Today's campaigners use strikingly similar tactics. Anderson's arguments on social harm are similar to those used by the Alliance 150 years ago. `If anything invades my social rights, certainly the traffic in strong drink does', wrote the secretary of the Alliance, as quoted by Mill. `It destroys my primary right of security by constantly creating and stimulating social disorder.. It impedes my moral and intellectual development, by surrounding my path with dangers.'

Mill took issue with the idea that drinking was a social act rather than simply a trade in alcohol. He did back limited restrictions so long as they didn't have an intended prohibitive effect on individuals. He classed drinking as an individual act, for right or wrong, along with religion, opinion or conscience and other `experiments in living', which should be `outside' the scope of the law. The individual act of having a drink is not the cause of crime, believed Mill, any more than parenthood is the cause of child abuse or holding an opinion is a breach of someone's `social rights'.

Mill was keenly aware of the dangers of linking spiralling social harms with individual behaviour. `So monstrance a principle is far more dangerous than any single interference with liberty', he wrote. `There is no violation of liberty which it would not justify; it acknowledges no right to any freedom whatsoever, except perhaps that of holding opinions in secret, without ever disclosing them: for the moment an opinion which I consider noxious passes anyone's lips, it invades all the "social rights" attributed to me by the Alliance.' Anderson's report and a future EU strategy will be relatively light on legislation - but, as Mill argues, the principle is more important than any particular act of law.

If the Anderson report is anything to go by, the EU looks set to propose shorter bar opening hours, days when shops cannot sell alcohol, health warnings, and higher taxes to put off drinkers across Europe. Here, too, Mill would disagree, because the restrictions spring from the above `monstrous principle' with the avowed intent of cutting individual consumption. He backed licensing laws but only as a means of regulating or taxing public sale of alcohol, not as a means of checking individual acts of drinking. `The limitation of number, for instance, of beer and spirit houses, for the express purpose of rendering them more difficult of access, and diminishing the occasions of temptation, not only exposes all to an inconvenience because there are some by whom the facility might be abused, but is suited only to a state of society in which the labouring classes are avowedly treated as children or savages, and placed under a education of restraint, to fit them for future admission to freedom.. No person who sets due value on freedom will give his adhesion to being so governed', Mill argued.

Today's public health campaigners may not specifically target the working classes (instead we're all in their sights), but they also, like the old prohibitionists, have little faith in the capacity of people to run their own lives without being instructed by propaganda or tutored in scare stories. The European report says: `Educational interventions, which show little effectiveness in reducing the harm done by alcohol, are not an alternative to measures that regulate the alcohol market, which have the greatest impact in reducing harm.. Educational programmes should not be implemented in isolation as an alcohol policy measure.but rather as a measure to reinforce awareness of the problems created by alcohol and to prepare the ground for specific interventions and policy changes.. Broad educational programmes, beginning in early childhood, should be implemented to inform young people of the consequences of alcohol consumption on health, family and society and of the effective measures that can be taken to prevent or minimise harm.'

There is perhaps one key difference between yesterday's and today's `prohibition campaigners'. Once the temperance movement believed man could be saved. Today, it joins with the public health lobby to treat drinking as a form of social pathology rather than a question of moral redemption. Once, public health had the aim of protecting society against disease. Today, the `new public health movement' seeks to protect society against people themselves.

Today's public health outlook on drinking dovetails neatly with other powerful contemporary trends that emphasise human vulnerability or undermine trust between individuals. Linking drinking to free-floating risks, independent of the intentions of individuals, is a characteristic of today's anti-humanist climate. But 200 years after his birth, we can take heart from the works and legacy of Mill. He stood against the tide in his day and won. We owe him a debt and we owe the future of freedom a duty to make our own stand against the new public health alliance of the twenty-first century.

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March of the food fascists

By Bettina Arndt

At my son's school the food fascists issued a new decree - only health foods for tuckshop recess specials. With the other volunteer mums, I stood for hours making summer rolls, wrapping fiddly rice paper around chicken breast and healthy vegies, and then watched in horror as the lines of boys took one look and walked on past. They had plenty of other healthy food to choose -- from sandwiches, sushi, salads and pasta -- and weren't thrilled to have their occasional chicken nuggets declared out of bounds.

When we examined the healthy crowd of boys romping around the playground, very few were overweight, many positively weedy. It's hardly surprising that most parents have been content with the mix of foods on sale in the tuckshop, understanding there's nothing wrong with the odd sausage roll to brighten long days in this academically demanding school.

But food fanatics are now infiltrating the parent committees, determined to impose their absurd prejudices on the rest of us. Junk food has become the new tobacco. Rising levels of obesity are giving licence to health food junkies to attempt to ban everything they don't like. And despite the contradictory evidence supporting these drastic measures, they already have scores on the board. New South Wales and Queensland restrict foods that can be sold in school tuck shops, with South Australia and Victoria to follow suit, and Western Australia likely to head in the same direction.

Yes, many kids are putting on more weight. And they are eating more hamburgers and drinking more fizzy drinks and watching more TV, which advertises these products. But it's not clear whether the weight gain is simply due to greater consumption of energy-dense foods or also to inactivity. Some recent Australian research supports the former, but many overseas studies point to inactivity as the major problem. And there is no good evidence that restricting junk food ads on television has any impact on obesity.

As state after state in the United States bans soft drink in schools, scientists have been churning out research trying to determine whether this makes sense. Last year, a study by the Georgetown Centre for Food and Nutrition Policy found no link between fizzy drink consumption and obesity in kids aged 12 to 18. A 2004 Harvard Medical school study of 14,000 children found calories from junk food had no more effect on weight than calories from health food.

Junk food in schools only affects kids with overweight parents, who may have a genetic susceptibility to weight gain, according to a 2004 National Bureau of Economic research study. It has no effect on students whose parents have normal weight, say the researchers. Yet bans on tuckshop food are only the beginning.

In America, the Public Health Advocacy Institute is proposing "putting nutritionally deficient foods behind the counter like you do with spray paint". A recent New Zealand Ministry of Health discussion paper suggests a new law extending the minimum age requirements on purchases of liquor and cigarettes to popular foods such as soft drinks, hamburgers, sweets and chocolate. One major problem for the food cops is that they have a moving target.

What exactly is junk food? Britain's new school rules have bogged down over determining whether fruit drinks containing lots of natural sugar are better, or worse, than low-calorie soft drinks containing artificial sweeteners. Across Australia, there is little agreement whether low-cal soft drinks, such as Coke Zero, and fruit juices should go on to the banned list. Are we likely to follow New York, where schools have banned whole milk, permitting only low-fat versions?

This is cloud cuckoo land. It is hardly surprising that Queensland students are already sneaking off campus to buy foods now banned in tuck shops and that there is a thriving black market in illicit items. Of course, kids are going to see these foods as even more desirable if we ban them. These extreme measures teach children little about commonsense and moderation, which are the essence of good eating.

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