From a Boston Magazine article about the push for a tax on soft drinks in Massachusetts:

Caroline Apovian, a professor at the Boston University School of Medicine and the director of the Nutrition and Weight Management Center at Boston Medical Center, says that sugary drinks should be regulated similarly to alcohol.

“We regulate alcohol,” she says. “We do not sell alcohol to children. We tax it and you can’t drink while you are working.”

If the day comes that sugary drinks are regulated like alcohol, I feel that I and many other parents will need to throw ourselves on the mercy of the court. Not only have we procured sweet tea, sports drinks, Dr. Pepper, and similar items for underage members of our household — think of how the law treats procuring controlled beverages for minors! — but, sinking deeper into iniquity, we have even enabled our offspring to set up as dealers and manufacturers themselves, plying their neighbors and friends with the fatal decoctions just to pocket the resulting quarters of revenue.

And the worst of it, as they never tell you ahead of time, is not the legal consequences we might face if Prof. Apovian had her way: it’s that you wind up squeezing all the lemons yourself.