It would have amounted to a tax on the poor, said some. It would have had little effect anyway, noted others, because people would still have been allowed free refills. It was un-American, said others still, for was this not the country of freedom, more or less, of choice?
Many New Yorkers said good riddance on Monday to the giant-soda ban that almost was. And in many ways, though they employed little legalese, and kept their words and sentences short, they were largely echoing the rationale of the State Supreme Court justice who overturned it.
Passed by the city's Board of Health last year despite heavy campaigning from soda companies, the ban outlawed the sale of sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces. It was to have taken effect on Tuesday at food establishments citywide.
But Justice Milton A. Tingling Jr. deemed the law "arbitrary and capricious," and many New Yorkers agreed.
"It's the right thing to do from a civil liberties point of view," said Sean Doolan, 47, a lawyer from Windham, N.Y., as he bought a movie ticket at the AMC Empire 25 on West 42nd Street. "Granted, people should make better decisions, but why not educate people rather than dictate to them what to do?"
Other New Yorkers and even tourists from less supersize countries agreed. Petra Cortie, 47, visiting from Amsterdam, said that even though the smallest soda in the United States was nearly the equivalent of the largest one in the Netherlands, she found the ban "patronizing."
"Everything is bigger in America," said Ms. Cortie, who had just drunk a large lemonade at Dallas BBQ, in Times Square. "Do you think it's going to help? I would have ordered two."
Rather than limit large drinks, she said, officials should make salads and vegetables cheaper, and drive up the price of fast food.
Richard Paterson, 22, a tourist from Britain, said it would be better to print the number of calories on every cup. "Forcing people to change doesn't help because they are not choosing to change what they are consuming," he said.
Others said they resented what critics deemed a "nanny state" mentality on the part of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who heavily backed the ban. Even with obesity on the rise, and despite the accompanying toll on health care costs, access to bucket-size sodas was widely seen as a matter of personal choice.
"If you want to drink large drinks and become obese, that's your right," said Christopher Rivera, 19, of Mott Haven, at the Regal Cinemas movie theater on West 42nd Street.
Even health-minded people who believed that large-size sodas were just too large felt conflicted about the ban. Several customers at Green Symphony, a fresh juice and natural food shop on West 43rd Street, said that while the intent of the ban was laudable, it could have ended up wreaking ill effects. One person said the limits could have hurt the environment, with people going through more cups.
Diane Lloyd, 44, an educator who had just bought a fresh green juice — kale, spinach, broccoli, lemon, among other extremely healthy ingredients — said the city should focus on education rather than a ban, along with expanding gym time in schools and creating more parks.
Formerly a teacher in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which has high poverty and low access to fresh food, Ms. Lloyd said many of the children she had taught had splurged on large sodas at the movies to share.
"Eating healthfully is different when you don't have a lot of money to spend," she said. "And that's something the mayor probably didn't think about, because he didn't have to."
News of the ban's reversal spread confusion in some restaurants, whose owners and managers had just finished stocking up on thousands of 16-ounce cups, and were prepared to toss out the larger ones. "The ban would have affected our sales," said Om Kohli, the store manager of a Subway near Times Square. "But then there is no other option."
There were those, however, who lamented the overturn of the ban. The enormousness of giant sodas was ridiculous, they said, and the fact that supersize sodas often cost just a few cents more than the next size down made overindulging far too easy.
"If we don't look out for ourselves," said Edwin Madera, 48, who is diabetic and lives in the Bronx, "it's good that somebody is looking out for us."
Priyanka Borpujari and Luke Hammill contributed reporting.
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