Thin mints should be our next government ban

The federal government should ban them.

Girl Scout cookie season is upon us, my friends - the most agonizing of all the seasons.

Dieters with ever-worsening health like me, who need to lose weight, are always at the mercy of those devilish treats - as thin mints are clearly as addictive as nicotine.

This year, thanks to COVID madness, our challenge is greater than it has ever been.

Millions of us haven't put a dent in removing the significant weight we put on in years one and two of our stay-at-home isolation.

When it comes to dieting, I've long suffered from a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome.

I am either really fit and healthy and spending hours at the gym, or I can be found cruising the junk food aisles at bulk-warehouse stores, loading up on the salty and sweet snacks I'll devour while binge-watching streaming content on Netflix.

Thanks to two years of sloth and diet abuse, the COVID pandemic has really set me back in the health and fitness department.

But in the last few weeks I've been eating right, exercising in my new home gym and going on regular long walks with my best buddy, Thurber, my yellow lab.

And now, just as I am on the cusp of making my new healthy-living routine permanent, I am greeted - that is, accosted - by a cabal of Girl Scouts stationed outside the entrance of my local grocery store.

Which is why, for our greater good, Girl Scout cookies must be banned, canceled, de-platformed, whatever, by the federal government.

Look, calling for such a ban is no longer so crazy. There's recently been many crazy emergency government edicts in the pursuit of health.

As COVID-19 began its spread in early 2020, federal, state and local government bodies shut down many of our businesses, closed schools and dictated our behaviors.

For months we were required to wear masks over our noses and mouths indoors and outdoors - only to recently discover that the blue cloth masks most of us wore were useless facial decorations.

The Biden administration even issued a vaccine mandate on all businesses with more than 100 employees - a mandate it withdrew only after the Supreme Court ruled that it exceeded the president's constitutional authority.

Meanwhile, any doctor, scientist or podcaster who has had questions about the efficacy of the vaccines, or the government's COVID decisions, has been labeled by the government, the media, the big social media platforms and aged '60s rock stars as a heretic who must be silenced.

To be sure, there will always be kooks spewing conspiracy theories in our digital world and the misinformation they share can be ridiculous and even harmful.

But what happened to the rational, open, level-headed pursuit of scientific truth?

Isn't there a lot of COVID data and evidence yet to sort through?

Considering the magnitude of this deadly global problem, isn't there a lot of science yet to do and scientific theories yet to study and test?

I'll leave it up to our government leaders and experts to answer such questions.

But since the authorities in charge have issued so many arbitrary and often discredited COVID bans and mandates in the interest of public health, I don't think it's asking too much that they ban the sale of Girl Scout cookies next.

The words "Girl Scout cookies" are horrible emotional triggers to chubby COVID victims like me.

Since millions of us are powerless to avoid these tasty treats - thus making them a public health nuisance - our government must ban them next.

Copyright 2022 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Tom Purcell is an author and humor columnist for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Email him at [email protected].