Some people believe that selling food and beverage whose detriment to humans’ health is confirmed by science ought to be prohibited for shops. I strongly disagree with this statement mainly because humans should have the freedom to choose.
Governments are not allowed to restrict people’s freedom of choice as long as they are not hurting others. Being born as a free creature, every human being has the right to choose the way they want to conduct their life, healthy or unhealthy. Therefore, the fact that this decision is highly likely to be bad for one does not suffice to limit their free will.
Moreover, interventions in the market would probably disrupt the business and cause economic disaster. When some restrictions are put on certain products like unhealthy fast-food, the demand decreases and manufacturers will most probably face recession because they cannot sell what they have produced. As a consequence, they will start firing their staff and it leads to numerous job losses around the country.
Some may argue that the ubiquity of unhealthy food and drink in a society results in social and economic disasters as people start to fall into a downward spiral of health issues. In addition, problems like high costs of healthcare and massive loss of workforce would probably impede a nation’s success. I concede that this might be a convoluted situation and cause problems, but using force to avert these issues is not justifiable and governments can use educational steps such as informing people and enriching the curriculum with information about nutrition to solve this conundrum.
In conclusion, regulations that constrain people’s decisions do not seem rational as they might have negative impacts on economy and violate humans’ liberty. However, to prevent harmful consequences of unhealthy food and drink consumption, there are some steps that governments can take.