Control Obesity with a Sugary Beverage Tax

The latest and greatest with "nanny" government is the resurrecting of the so-called sugar-sweetened drink tax or soda tax. This tax was attempted in California back in 2007 and it didn't pass. However, there are currently 40 states that do impose a "small" sales tax on soft drinks and/or snacks. Items purchased from vending machines are taxed at the highest rates.

I personally do not think taxing soft drinks or other sugar-sweetened beverages is going to have any noticeable impact on obesity. People are people and they are going to do what they want regardless of a tax being forced upon the beverage(s) they happen to enjoy.

I'm not arguing that obesity in this country is a problem, but I can speak from personal experience that there are many things other than soda that can cause a person to be fat. I have been heavy my whole life. By doctor's charts and insurance charts I would fall in the category of "morbid" obesity (which by the way I hate that term, it conjures up pictures of someone in the Guinness Book of World Records).

As a child I was always the heaviest in my class, and I never drank sodas or other sugar-sweetened beverages. As a matter of fact sodas, fruit drinks (the kind with high fructose corn syrup), and other junk foods weren't allowed in my home. Yet, I managed to weigh over 100 pounds by the young age of 8 years old. As I grew up, nothing changed. I was heavy in high school, though thankfully no longer the heaviest in my class. Again I can assure all of you I wasn't heavy due to high consumption of sodas or other sugary drinks. Quite the opposite, I cannot stand the flavor of anything that's overly sweet. The only exception to that rule for me would be pastries.

I think the soda tax or sugary beverage tax or whatever they want to name it will not change anything, except take more money from people who are already struggling to make ends meet. Some people may say, "Look at cigarettes, we tax them and they're not as popular anymore." My answer to that would be it has nothing or very little to do with the high taxes imposed on cigarettes.In my opinion cigarette sales are down because quite frankly it's not "cool" anymore to be a smoker. For years and years it was shown on TV and in magazines as the "chic" thing to do.

Even today with all the news about how cigarettes cause cancer and how second hand smoke causes cancer many people are still smoking with no plans to quit. Just a couple of weeks ago I was standing outside a major fitness center. Two young women in their mid-twenties had just finished working out and both lit up cigarettes. I started laughing, so one girl said to me "What are you laughing at"? I said, "You! Here you're working out to be healthy and then you both light up a cigarette. I find that hysterically funny." The girl replied, "We don't work out to be healthy. We work out to stay thin, so we can look good." Whether they are good-looking or not is a matter of opinion. I may be "overweight" by standards in Hollywood or on a chart, but I can assure you many people think I look great.

The cigarette story is to illustrate that all the information in the world and extra taxes imposed on a product will never deter people from doing something they know is not in their body's best interest.

Our legislators think that by raising the price on something, especially something many people enjoy, it's going to curtail their purchasing of that product. Remember years ago, before "they" wanted us to all get on the recycling band wagon we could buy a soda, and the only coast was the price of the soda. Now, you have to pay the cost of the soda and .05 cent "recycling" fee. Did sodas stop selling because we all had to pay an extra .30 cents for a six-pack? No, I don't think so because if soda sales had diminished we wouldn't be talking about taxing it to help "battle" obesity.

Here are some other thoughts for you to ponder, just in case you think the "soda tax" is a good idea. Where does it all stop? Today it's let's tax soda and sugar-sweetened beverages. People don't live just on soda, and even if sodas do contribute to making people overweight, doesn't every drop of food placed in your mouth have the same potential if done to extremes?

Give it a little while, next they'll want to tax anything and everything we put into our mouths. Perhaps the real agenda is to start with taxing soft drinks and then moving through all processed foods including: ice cream, hot dogs, luncheon meats, frozen dinners, and so on.

Perhaps you think I'm going overboard with my next statement, but little by little our freedoms are being taken away from us each and every time a law such as this soda tax is passed.

When I was a child my parents told me how to do pretty much everything in my life. I looked forward to becoming an adult, so that I could move out and make my own rules and decisions. These days I'm starting to feel like I traded one set of parents for just a bigger more powerful set of parents. Pretty soon I won't have to worry (or have the luxury) of making my own decisions because the government will be making them all for me. It's starting to look like the USA isn't so "free" after all.

Sources:
http://www.iotf.org/documents/RuddReportSoftDrinkTaxFeb2009.pdf