I suppose it was inevitable I’d write about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sooner or later.

Appointed to lead the federal Department of Health and Human Services after serving (himself) as a lawyer and state official, he’s best known nowadays for his wide variety of views that… let’s be blunt here: he’s a kook. Chemtrails? 5G panic? Lyme disease trutherism? He believes it all. He advocates for the supremacy of a red-meat-and-booze diet, while looking less “well preserved for his age” than “embalmed.” And now he has a podium to stand behind, because (the Assclown apparently believes) what totalitarian regime would be complete without some kind of health obsession?

A less often discussed but equally true thing about RFK Jr. is that he’s none too bright. Case in point: people who are trying to turn their kooky pseudoscientific beliefs into some kind of populist movement would be well advised not to do deeply unpopular things that deeply irritate the masses, like, just to pluck an example out of the air, vaguely threatening to regulate coffee out of the market.

“We’re going to ask Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks, ‘show us the safety data that shows that it’s okay for a teenage girl to drink an iced coffee with 115 grams of sugar in it…”

On the surface, that’s about sugar rather than coffee, but just like his personal health, that idea doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

A large hot coffee at Dunkin’ is 20 fluid ounces; an iced coffee is 32, but that’s to make room for the ice, so let’s say it’s still 20 fluid ounces of actual coffee. 115 grams is a hair over 4 ounces, which is… not quite as neat as saying “20% of the cup by volume” because sugar is a bit lighter than the same volume of water and would take up slightly more room in the cup, but let’s go with 20%.

You’d have to go well out of your way to order something like that. And if you made it at home, you’d have trouble drinking it unless you’re Edgar from Men in Black.

So going after sugar in coffee isn’t about the sugar, it’s about the flavor of coffee. We’ve seen that trick before with vape pens, where regulating the flavor of vape tobacco was a step toward marginalizing it, making it less popular, making restrictions easier…

…and Kennedy has blamed caffeine (among a few other things) for his assortment of self-inflicted health problems that he thinks don’t disqualify him from giving advice. So yes, he thinks banning coffee would be a good idea, and no, it still isn’t.

I hold no brief for Maura Healey, who became governor of Dunkin’s home state decades after my family moved out of it and who I know very little about, but I’m with her on this one:

P.S. I often put cocoa powder in my coffee at home, and compared to RFK Jr., I look like Mr. Universe.