Student health has long been at the forefront of debate. Parents worry their kids are not getting enough of one thing or too much of another, and the lunch services desperately try to comply.

A commonly demonized entity has been sugar, and specifically the sodas that contain it. They are banned from sell in school and students must purchase a diet alternative.

This is foolish. Students should be responsible for their own health. Students should be able to decide how much sugar they consume.

Nonetheless, soda has been made into a scapegoat even as sugar is still readily provided to students. There is a vending machine filled with candy. The library has packets of sugar waiting to be poured into coffee. These consumables can together add up to be even more sugar than a soda. The ban on soda does nothing.

That does not mean candy and coffee should be banned. That will not stop sugar from getting in the school to students. What it does mean is that the government should not ban things on a whimsy.

Students are still getting just as much sugar as they did when they had non-diet sodas, they are just getting it differently. Schools cannot stop students from obtaining sugar. They can merely inconvenience students. All these bans do is provide an irritant to students. More importantly, these bans try to extend past where the government should have any jurisdiction: in deciding what students do with their lives.

Students have the right to consume soda with sugar in it and the government has no right to say otherwise. The government is continuing to outstretch its arms into student lives where it does not belong, in deciding what they are and are not allowed to do when it in no way concerns the actual functions of the school.

It is true that the fact still remains: too much sugar is bad. Students probably should have limited sugar intake. But it is not the government’s place to decide this.

These regulations are ludicrous and should be removed. There was no need to ban sugared sodas in the first place.