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Food

Police Are Cracking Down on Kids' Lemonade Stands

Because nothing is sketchier than a bunch of underage humans selling homemade lemonade without a permit.

Nothing says corporate negligence and Big Business run-amok quite like a CEO wearing pigtails and clad in nothing but a Frozen-themed onesie.

No, I'm not talking about a Saturday night sleepover at the Blackwater boardroom, nor do I wish to subject my poor brain to the image of what that might look like, ever again.

That's right, sheeple. I'm talking about a spate of incidents occurring throughout this nation that are attacking the building block of American capitalism: the lemonade stand.

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Most recently, police in Overton, Texas—about 120 miles east of Dallas—shut down a lemonade stand run by two little girls.

Yes, two little girls!

Why? Because they allegedly didn't have the correct permits.

We're apparently talking about the interplay between something called the Texas Cottage Food Laws, which regulate what individuals can sell from home kitchens, and the Texas Baker's Bill, which exempts certain baked items from the prohibition. Can lemonade be sold by little girls in a lemonade stand in the state of Texas? Minds appear to differ.

Zoey and Andria Green, ages 7 and 8, wanted to raise about $100 to take their father to Splash Kingdom on Father's Day. They set up a lemonade stand, adorably dubbed the "Green Girls Lemonade Stand." The girls were selling powdered Country Time Lemonade, according to their mother.

The police got wind of the illicit operation and swept in, shutting the stand down with impunity.

The Green girls said they were "sad" about the police action. "I'm a little confused, what in the world is going on here?" said Andria.

A dash cam even captured the moment the police closed in. Mom reacted with surprise and told the cops she didn't think a permit was needed for a "little lemonade stand."

Yeah, I'm pretty damn sure nobody did.

Elsewhere in the state, Texas police are reacting to the bad rap the Overton fuzz garnered. In Grand Ledge, Texas, local police purposely stopped by a lemonade stand opened by three young sisters and posed for cheesy pictures with them. Nothing says selfie stick quite like the prospect of an illegal enterprise.

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Apparently, however, Texas is not the only state to crack down on young entrepreneurs and their citrus-oriented endeavors.

In Iowa, a four-year old's lemonade stand was shut down in half an hour! Georgia has also been known to get in on the action; there, another set of sisters hoping to save up to go to a water park were the subject of police action. Who knew water-related attractions were such a hit with budding entrepreneurs? Boardrooms across the country must be littered with Slip N' Slides.

Other states have gotten on the no-lemonade-stand bandwagon too. And would you guess that even San Francisco—bastion of liberal loosey gooseyness—has also cracked down on lemonade and brownie vendors of a very young age?

Most shocking of all, perhaps, is that Canada—our kinder, syrupy neighbor to the north—is not above shutting down an eight-year old's lemonade stand. Plus he had autism. And he was doing it for charity. Sounds almost exactly like the start of a Dickens novel to me.

Back in Texas, though, the Overton, Texas police and the mini perpetrators ended up striking an agreement: the girls could keep the lemonade stand so long as they did not keep the profits from the transactions in which they engaged.

Way to encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, America! Good thing Texas and the rest of the states have so little crime. Wouldn't want the police distracted by underage thugs.