1. United States
2. Ind.
3. Letter

Regarding the executive order related to Make Indiana Healthy Again that you signed earlier this year, one of the provisions prohibits the purchase of candy and soda with SNAP benefits. This does nothing to combat unhealthy eating among SNAP recipients. It is a red herring. It demonizes the wrong population segment. Statistics of who receives SNAP are as follows: 38% are working adults, 39% are children, 20% are elderly, 10% are disabled. I do not know if there is overlap between working adults and elderly. However, what I do know is that a lot of people on SNAP live in areas with food deserts, possibly do not have functioning kitchens, or functioning kitchen equipment with which to cook a healthy meal. SNAP currently prohibits the purchase of ready-to-eat prepared foods, which means a working adult on SNAP benefits cannot buy a deli item or a hot rotisserie chicken on their way home from a hard day's work. They are expected to buy raw food and cook it for their family every day. This is unrealistic, unfair, and punitive to people who are already working below the poverty level because of corporate welfare. Instead of targeting them, why don't we target wasteful tax spending like the heliport at your home which the taxpayers paid to putbuild and install? In order to make Indiana healthier, we need to improve access to healthy food in the form of lower food prices, accessible food stores in areas where there are currently none or just gas stations and places like Dollar General. This executive order comes from a place o privilege from people who are very disconnected from their constituency, and for a state who touts so much ⁰Christian principles, all this does is create misery instead of alleviating it. If you really want to reduce the number of people on SNAP, perhaps a more useful executive order would mandate corporations like Walmart, McDonald's, Amazon, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Burger King pay their employees a living wage.