Sales of sugary drinks fell dramatically across five U.S. cities, after they implemented taxes targeting those drinks – and those changes were sustained over time. That’s according to a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum.
Researchers say the findings provide more evidence that these controversial taxes really do work. A claim the beverage industry disputes.
The cities studied were: Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. Taxes ranged from 1 to 2 cents per ounce. For a 2-liter bottle of soda, that comes out to between 67 cents to $1.30 extra in taxes.
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Kaplan and his colleagues found that, on average, prices for sugar-sweetened drinks went up by 33.1% and purchases went down by basically the same amount – 33%.
What if I don’t want to be healthy? Why must the government punish me? If behavior is to be corrected by law, correct the companies not the people.
If one’s goals are say, maximize freedom and fairness/equality/equity for humans and minimize harm from sugary drinks, it makes more to ban the advertising of these unhealthy foods rather than make them more difficult to procure for those with less money.
So some other person can come behind you and say, “what if I want to know about different ways I can be unhealthy!?”
Give me a break. Government ends up footing the bill for the outcomes of these decisions. We can either tax the people making these decisions to pay for it, or tax everyone to pay for it. The latter just means people who don’t engagie in the behavior subsidize the people who do.
Tax unhealthy foods, make (actually) healthy food tax free. And not food that some marketing shitbag slaps a name like “healthy choice” on. Actually healthy food.
Use that tax money to subsidize the production & distribution of healthy food, especially to eliminate food deserts. This will lower the cost to the government of dealing with the consequences of unhealthy foods.
So, I’m in favour of sugar taxes, but lots of studies have found that healthy people actually cost more in the long run, because they actually live into their old age where they start costing a shit ton. For the most part unhealthy people just end up dying young.
Can you share the studies you base your argument on? Those who live longer might also pay more tax, so it’s not a clear cut for me.
So, companies advertise to make more people buy something but then governments tax it to make less people buy it. Hmmm ok.
Also, human nutrition is highly controversial, should we really be basing health oriented taxes on moving/unstable science?
I’m sure any day now a big, peer reviewed study will come out that says Coke is good for you.
“Coke, it does a body good.”
Isn’t that the slogan or am I getting mixed up