According to at least a study, consumption of soft drinks high in sugar decreased by 25% in about 2 years.
The sellers tried to avoid having the warnings so they decreased their sugar levels in their foods as well, or had them replaced them by sweeteners instead.
Is the citizen subdued to the state, or does the state work for the citizen?
At the end they are not more than a warning, it's not like they are forbidden.
There is a case against advertising and consent, but the label is absolutely against consent. You would never pay someone to tell you not to do something you want to do.
It's probably not the best idea to tell people what they will and will not do. A more accurate phrasing would have been:
> I would never pay someone to tell me not to do something I want to do.
That aside, I definitely would tell the state to warn me about things I want to do, if there's a good basis behind that warning. I would also pay the state to tell others who may have not had made the time/effort to research it.
This isn't limited to the state. People often pay professionals who in turn advise them not to do what they want to do - lawyers, nutritionists, doctors, therapists, tax professionals, real estate professionals, etc.
As long as they don't prevent that behavior: No. In this particular case, they're not even adding a tax.
There's a long history of the state doing it in more draconian ways (fines for seatbelts, non-functioning lights etc). Fines in some cities for not maintaining the lawn.
Most people are in favor of some of these, and not for others.
How do you eliminate the conflict of interest between the people that run the state and the behavior they want to imprint in society?
Um, no? That's kind of the purpose of having a state.
The only difference I see is that the government has your best interest in mind (ostensibly, of course, don't mistake me for thinking it really does). Advertisers do not.
I'm much less free to choose whether I comply with the government, whose power to modify behavior is ultimately derived from the threat of men with guns coming to lock me in a concrete cell.
Advertising is memetic pollution but I'll still take it any day, every time over government compulsion; the equivocation of the two is ludicrous.
Advertising, however, survives only because it finds the people interested in the products. When the government does it, it survives on people that pay for it at the risk of going to jail. The standard of what government can do is infinitely higher, because it can do something against everyone and do it forever.