He’s no longer mayor, but he plans to retain his role as New York City’s favorite finger-wagging nanny.
In his first public appearance since he turned over control of the Big Apple to Bill de Blasio, former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg said he’s not planning to give up on his crusade to stop people from killing themselves.
“So much of the tragedy in this world is self-inflicted,” he told Bloomberg TV’s Betty Liu on Tuesday. “There are wars and there’s genocide,” he said. “But most of the people die before they should because of their own behavior,” he said.
In a joint interview with billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, the billionaire former mayor hinted that his Third Act — after founding Bloomberg LP and being NYC’s mayor for an historic three terms — will be as a consumer advocate.
“If you take a look at these companies, like the tobacco companies, they target those who don’t know,” Bloomberg said. “And that’s what we have to work on: educating them and giving them the tools and counteracting special interests who make money selling them products or getting them to do things are dangerous to themselves.”
The former mayor, dressed in a blue pin-stripped suit and purple tie, didn’t mention the makers and sellers of large sugary drinks — a failed pet cause in his last hours as mayor — but he took a shot across the bow of the tobacco industry, which he said will kill a billion people this century.
“We brought smoking down in a good part of this world dramatically and that will save an enormous number of lives,” he told Liu.
“Having said that, there’s also places where the smoking industry has managed to get poor people who don’t know it’s bad for their health to increase their rate of smoking.”
The joint appearance was billed as a talk with Gates, 58, about his annual letter, published today, on the charitable work of The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, who is currently ranked as the richest man in the world, said in the letter that the world is making loads of progress combating disease and poverty. He predicted that no nation will be as poor in 2035 as the 35 nation’s currently classified by the World Bank as poverty stricken.
Bloomberg, 71, has long worked with Gates Foundation and gave $100 million last year toward Gates’ efforts to combat polio. The two men also joined forces in 2008 with $500 million to “combat the global tobacco epidemic.”
As mayor, Bloomberg outlawed smoking in bars and restaurants — efforts that have been widely applauded even by bar owners. But his move to forbid restaurants and other eateries from selling sugary drinks over 16 ounces resulted in general backlash, including jokes on national television.
The ban was overturned by a New York court last year and upheld in appeal last summer. The court was concerned, in part, by the ban’s arbitrary nature. Sodas were banned but equally sugary milk-based drinks were unaffected.