Corporate Crime Reporter
Swann: What's Illegal About Having A Junk Food Vending Machine in School?
19 Corporate Crime Reporter 3(3), January 14, 2005
Lynn Swann yesterday answered critics who want him fired as chairman of the
President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.
Swann was paid an undisclosed amount to appear next to a vending machine filled
with junk food and with a group of African-American elementary school children
at a press conference sponsored by the vending machine industry at the National
Press Club.
“I’m not appearing here as chairman (of the President's Council),
I’m appearing here as Lynn Swann as a private citizen,” Swann said.
“And that was clear from the beginning. When you have an industry that
is trying to do the right thing, and to try and have some impact, I don’t
see that as a conflict.”
At the press conference, the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA)
unveiled its initiative to place labels under vending machine items to rank
their nutritional value.
Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public
interest, who yesterday called on President Bush to fire Swann, said that the
vending industry's new campaign “is just a public-relations ploy to forestall
more school systems from banning junk food from vending machines on school grounds.”
Swann, when asked whether junk food vending machines should be banned from public
schools, answered that “it is not my decision to tell people what kind
of business they should or should not be in. I don’t smoke cigarettes.
But I’m not out there saying you shouldn’t sell cigarettes –
that it’s illegal.”
Republicans in Pennsylvania want the former Pittsburgh Steeler football wide
receiver to run for Governor in 2006 against Ed Rendell.
“In our country, you are allowed to create a business,” Swann said. “It is a vending machine business. My position is that that is not my business. It is legal in this country to do it. The schools have control over what are in the vending machines. They are run by the cities and the government and private schools are privately owned, and they make those choices. Those are not choices for Lynn Swann. And those are not choices for anyone but those who are in control of that particular business or that particular entity.”
Swann was asked whether putting junk food vending machines in schools should
be made illegal.
“What’s illegal about having a vending machine in the school?”
he asked.
NAMA president Richard Geerdes then interjected that “the reality is that
taking the machines out of the schools doesn’t work. The surveys show
that it is not a major factor in what the kids buy and eat during the week.”
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