The battle for your soda begins in earnest today when the Board of Health holds its public hearing on the Mayor's plan to ban large sugary drinks in most city stores. But as far as Hizzoner is concerned, the war has already been won. "Compared to smoking, this is an easy battle to win and nobody’s going to stop this," Bloomberg told reporters yesterday of his bid to KO sugary drinks larger than 16 ounces. Our billionaire mayor from Boston has spoken! Prepare to purchase two 8 ounce sodas at once, thirsty people of New York!
Still, the fight goes on. Big Soda has been waging its own PR war (radio ads! movie trailers! newspaper spreads!) and has even managed to get a few folks to join in their cause. Even some pols. "The mayor wants to do this by fiat," Councilman Dan Halloran told a crowd at a pro-soda rally yesterday. "We’re not going to let one man become king in the City of New York, are we?" (uh, third term anyone?)
At the same rally opponents to the ban delivered more than 90,000 signatures to City Hall. So how will it all end? We'll find out soon enough. The hearing on the ban is today, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. in room 3-32 of 2 Gotham Center at 42-09 28th Street, LIC, Queens. It should be a blast!
