For the first time in the six-decade history of the food-stamp program, a group of states is preparing to bar recipients from using benefits to buy soda and candy. Eighteen states now hold active federal waivers that restrict those purchases, and the rules take effect on a staggered calendar stretching from early 2026 into 2028. South Carolina’s restriction is scheduled to begin August 31, 2026, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s waiver tracker. The change marks a fundamental shift in a program that has always let participants decide what groceries to buy, and it arrives already tangled in litigation.
What the waivers actually restrict
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, still widely known as food stamps, historically allowed recipients to purchase almost any food or beverage sold for home preparation, with narrow exceptions for hot prepared meals, alcohol and tobacco. The new waivers carve out sugary drinks and candy from that broad allowance. The exact list varies by state: some target soda and candy specifically, others sweep in energy drinks, sweetened beverages, fountain drinks or prepared desserts.
The USDA describes the waivers as a push to steer benefit dollars toward more nutritious items, and the agency has encouraged states to tailor requests to local priorities. Because each state defines the restricted categories differently, a product blocked in one state may remain eligible next door. The practical burden falls on retailers, who must reprogram point-of-sale systems to flag restricted items when a benefit card is used, and on recipients, who have to relearn what their benefits will and will not cover at checkout.
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A rollout spread across three years
Rather than a single national start date, the restrictions phase in state by state. Several took effect in early 2026, including Indiana and Utah on January 1 and Idaho and Oklahoma in mid-February. Others land later: North Dakota’s begins September 1, 2026, Ohio’s and Virginia’s October 1, 2026, and still others push into 2027 and 2028, with Nevada’s target date set for February 2028. South Carolina’s August 31 start places it among the states implementing this fall, joining Arkansas, whose July 1 restriction covers soda, low-juice fruit drinks, energy drinks and candy. The categories themselves differ by state, so a shopper in one state may find candy blocked while a neighbor across the border does not, and the same product can be eligible in one aisle and declined in another depending on how each state wrote its request.
The staggered schedule reflects the administrative work each state must complete before its restriction can operate, from notifying retailers to updating the systems that authorize purchases. It also means the policy will not look uniform across the country for years. A SNAP household that moves, or that shops across a state line, could encounter one set of rules in its home state and another a few miles away. The USDA maintains a state-by-state map of approved waivers, target dates and the specific categories each covers.
The court ruling that reshaped the map
The list of active waivers is smaller than the number originally approved because a federal court intervened. On June 22, 2026, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in Aragon v. Rollins, ordered that the approvals for five states — Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia — be vacated and their implementation halted. The USDA’s own tracker now flags those five states with the court’s order in place of an implementation date.
As CBS News reported, the court found that the agency had exceeded its legal authority in granting those particular waivers as demonstration projects, reasoning that the underlying law permits pilot projects to test the program’s administrative efficiency rather than to reshape recipients’ diets. The ruling applied to the five named states and did not disturb the other approvals. Subtracting those five from the 23 states that had received approval leaves 18 with waivers still in force — the figure now moving toward implementation.
What it means for households on benefits
For the roughly 42 million Americans who rely on SNAP, including many older adults on fixed incomes, the change alters a routine that had been consistent for generations. A benefit card that once covered a case of soda or a bag of candy will decline those items at the register in participating states once the local start date passes. The restriction does not reduce the dollar value of benefits; it narrows what the same benefit can buy.
Older recipients may feel the shift in specific ways, since soft drinks and sweets are common household staples and the rules do not distinguish by age. Advocates for the waivers argue that focusing benefits on nutritious food improves health outcomes and honors taxpayer intent, while critics contend the restrictions add stigma and administrative friction without clear evidence of dietary change. The unresolved question is legal as much as nutritional: the Aragon ruling has already knocked out five approvals, and whether the remaining 18 survive further challenges will determine how much of this first-of-its-kind experiment actually reaches store shelves.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
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