Photo by soleil1016

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a new enemy in sight, and this time it’s sugary drinks.

Sister site Gothamist reported last night that Bloomberg wants to ban the sale or large sodas and sugary drinks—anything 16 ounces or larger would count—at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts. Everything from energy drinks to sweetened iced teas would be a no-no, though diet sodas, fruit juices, unsweetened iced teas, dairy-based drinks, booze, and drinks with fewer than 25 calories per eight ounces would be exempted. Also, the ban wouldn’t apply to grocery or convenience stores.

For Bloomberg, the ban is about making it harder for people to drink themselves into obesity. It’s also not his first move into regulating food—in March, he banned food donations to homeless shelters because he said city officials couldn’t assess salt and fat content of the food; Bloomberg has also taken aim at trans fats and salt.

Could this ever come to pass in D.C.? Probably not—at least not for a while. It was only two years ago that a proposed penny-per-ounce excise tax on sodas failed to attract the support of the majority of the D.C. Council, though legislators did impose the traditional six percent sales tax on them to fund a healthy school lunch program. D.C. and other local jurisdictions did impose a ban on chocolate and strawberry-flavored milk, though, but that decision was also rife with controversy.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the issue isn’t worth discussing again. Obesity is highest in wards 7 and 8, according to a 2010 D.C. report. A recent report from the University of California in San Francisco found that “slapping a penny-per-ounce tax on sweetened beverages would prevent nearly 100,000 cases of heart disease, 8,000 strokes, and 26,000 deaths over the next decade.”

Still, a ban is a very blunt instrument, and it’s doubtful that the D.C. Council could muster up the political backbone to go that far.