Seattle Schools Want Back in the Junk-Food-Dealing Racket

Junk food, like crack cocaine, is a great product to sell if you enjoy being paid in cash, as opposed to moral high ground. This is a lesson that the Seattle School Board appears to be learning now.

The Seattle Times reports that the board has all but concluded that its foray into outlawing junk food in campus vending machines has been a failure. The school district is now looking to fund education on the jiggling bellies of its students once again.

The Seattle School Board is considering relaxing its ban on unhealthful food in high schools amid complaints from student governments that the policy has cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars in vending-machine profits over the past seven years.

The school board's vending-machine policy was passed in 2004 and allows for only products like fruit juice, granola bars and baked chips to be sold. The difference in profits has been stark. In 2001, before the junk food ban, the high schools in the city apparently made $214,000 from vending-machine sales. This year those same schools have made $17,000.