Food Stamps Should Not Pay for Junk Food

Dear Editor,
    A receipt from H-E-B blew into my yard the other day. I picked it up. On the top, it read that it had been paid with a food-stamp account. The purchased items were some pop-fizz candy, a Twix, a six-pack of Hill Country Fare cola, and a HCF strawberry soda. Now, I am certainly not against providing the needy with food, but I am sure as hell against paying for these sugar-laden poisons to be consumed, and I think most people would also not want to pay for the health problems arising from the consumption of such junk. I urge you to look into this. Do H-E-B and other supermarket chains lobby for their generic junk food to be subsidized as are their staples? Is this practice allowed to keep the poor in “their place,” as it’s always seemed to me that extra payouts for extra children do? As long as abuses like this occur, you can be sure of two things: at least opposition to social programs by many of the wealthy and the continuing decline in the health of the poor, which necessarily leads to more poverty.