( CNN ) -- America 's image of New Yorkers combines swagger , style and an unwillingness to get pushed around . Humphrey Bogart once warned a Nazi commander in `` Casablanca '' that `` there are certain sections of New York , Major , that I would n't advise you to try to invade . '' Seventy years ago , movie audiences would have laughed in appreciation of the city 's toughness . Today , however , Rick Blaine would hardly recognize the place . Mayor Michael Bloomberg hit the panic button over soft drinks this week , proposing a citywide ban on any serving of sugary-sweet soda more than 16 ounces in restaurants , movie theaters and street carts . Bloomberg claims that he needs to have the cops throw themselves between consumers and liquid refreshment to save citizens from themselves and prevent obesity . Big Gulp , meet Big Brother . Overheard on CNN.com : Doughnut lovers ' lament , washed down with a giant soda . This is just the latest intervention staged by Hizzoner . His past decrees banned smoking , not just indoors in places of business , but also outside of businesses and in parks . Bloomberg also banned restaurants from cooking with artificial trans fats . In those cases , he took a lot of criticism as being a health hysteric and a food nanny , but at least an argument existed that consumer choice might have been irrelevant . Restaurants do n't usually advertise all of their ingredients on the menu , for instance , and few people get asked permission before someone lights a cigarette in the doorway of an establishment . Soft drinks : Public enemy No . 1 in obesity fight ? In this case , though , no such argument exists . People purchase the volume of beverage they desire , and in almost every case , plenty of choice exists for smaller quantities . The outcome of barring the sale of anything larger than 16 ounces of Coca-Cola or Pepsi at the ballpark will be that more containers will get thrown out as people just buy more units , and that waste will have to be disposed of later . Consumers will pay more and have more inconvenience in purchasing what they want to drink , and will still end up drinking the same amount anyway . Is drinking soda really that bad for you ? The new restrictions make little sense for most other venues . Fast-food restaurants have customer-accessible fountains in most cases for in-store dining . Few people buy the large size , and many of these restaurants no longer bother with size at all for those sales , sticking with one standard size . Will Bloomberg start regulating how many refills each customer gets , too ? For that matter , many traditional restaurants offer free refills on soft drinks , too . If Bloomberg caps those , what happens when customers just buy another soft-drink order ? Will the restaurant be forced to stop serving root beer far more quickly than they stop serving beer ? A soda per day may raise heart-attack risk . Nor do the drink categories make sense , either . Bloomberg 's order wo n't apply to alcoholic beverages , even though many of those are loaded with calories , especially beers and ales , or to dairy-based drinks . As Reason 's Jacob Sullum points out , that means that while New Yorkers will no longer be able to ingest 240 calories drinking a 20-ounce Coke , they will still have no trouble buying a 24-ounce , 520-calorie double-chocolatey frappucino at Starbucks , or a 20-ounce , 800-calorie milkshake . Now , some of those choices may be better than others , although it 's hard to argue that the dietary value of milk justifies ingesting an 800-calorie drink as opposed to the 240-calorie cola . But more to the point , that 's a decision that free people should be able to make on their own . New Yorkers should n't have to ask Bloomberg , `` Mayor , may I ? '' when selecting an otherwise-legal and nonlethal beverage . Eatocracy : How I kicked my Coke habit . Bloomberg justifies his nanny-state interventions by pointing to the social costs of obesity , but there is no direct causal link between obesity and 20-ounce sodas with sugar in them , and neither would it be anyone 's business at all except for the increasing government control and subsidies for health care . Bloomberg 's insistence on dictating consumer choices has a more direct connection to an assumption that government should control our access to health care than obesity has to a couple of Big Gulps . Perhaps it 's time for New Yorkers to put their mayor on a power diet , and to wise up about the real trade-offs between expanding safety-net programs and personal choice . Soft drinks wo n't be the last of the usual suspects that Mayor May I will round up in his crusade to dictate his choices and eliminate everyone else 's . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ed Morrissey .
Ed Morrissey : New York mayor 's proposal to ban soda size servings is wrong . He says it makes no sense : What 's to stop people from drinking too much soda ? He calls Mayor Michael Bloomberg 's proposal a nanny-state rule . Morrissey : New rule would dictate mayor 's choices and eliminate everyone else 's .