Federal officials have approved West Virginia’s waiver request to prevent benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from being used to buy drinks with sugar and artificial flavorings.
“I’m always fond of saying that the SNAP — the N for SNAP — it stands for nutrition. But unfortunately, over a long period of time, that wasn’t always the case,” Gov. Patrick Morrisey said from an announcement in Washington, D.C.
“So I’m happy now that in West Virginia, taxpayers are not going to be subsidizing soda and these sugary drinks — things that have no nutritional value and are directly linked to obesity, diabetes, a lot of other terrible health care outcomes.”
West Virginia’s waiver request was one of six approvals announced Monday afternoon by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Nebraska was the first state in the nation to receive a waiver to move toward restricting low-income recipients from using SNAP benefits to buy soda and energy drinks.
West Virginia applied for a federal waiver to remove soda from eligible purchases under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program while also adding some hot foods considered healthy under allowable purchases for recipients.
Under the state’s waiver application, the drinks meant to be removed from eligibility for purchase through SNAP include regular soda, diet soda and zero sugar/calorie soda.
Retailers may need to update their point-of-sale systems and train staff to comply with the new rules.
West Virginia’s waiver request acknowledges a possible cost to institute the changes to be be passed along to the state’s 2,118 SNAP retailers.
Morrisey, a Republican, has emphasized policies in line with the Make America Healthy Again agenda promoted by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who appeared at Monday afternoon’s announcement in Washington, D.C.
“We live in a democracy. People can make their own choice about what they’re going to buy and what they’re not going to buy. If you want to buy a sugary soda, you ought to be able to do that,” Kennedy said at the announcement.
“U.S. taxpayers should not pay for it. U.S. taxpayers should not be paying to feed kids foods — the poorest kids in our country — with foods that are going to give them diabetes, and then my agency ends up through Medicaid and Medicare paying for those injuries. We’re going to put an end to that, and we’re doing it step by step, state by state.”
Morrisey highlighted the poor statistics surrounding West Virginia’s health outcomes.
“There’s no way around it when it comes to West Virginia. Unfortunately, we’re ranked at or near the bottom of a lot of the tough public health metrics. We lead the country or near leading in the country in obesity, in diabetes, a lot of the chronic conditions that have really been disabling our people,” he said.
But Morrisey added, “The good news today is that we all have the power to change.”