This soda tax scheme is the latest to surface as liberals scramble to try and figure out how to pay for their proposed government take-over of health care.
Singling out soda may make addressing the obesity problem easy, but it doesn’t make it effective. And I think the danger is that this approach threatens to distract attention from the complex, multifactorial nature of the problem and the many avenues that must be addressed to tackle it effectively.
Op-ed: Lessons from the war on tobacco: How to beat Big Soda
October 30, 2014
By Holly Scheider
Holly Scheider is Outreach Coordinator for the Berkeley Healthy Child Coalition and a former Tobacco Policy Coordinator for Contra Costa County.
Remember when people could smoke in restaurants, on airplanes, and at work? This changed, thanks to tireless efforts by health advocates like me.
In 1988, California voters passed an excise tax on the tobacco industry which raised prices, reduced consumption, and funded programs that successfully advocated for clean indoor air laws in cities across the state. The resulting groundswell eventually convinced state leaders to reject tobacco campaign donations and take action. This took decades because we had to fight Big Tobacco and its local front groups, their out-of-town lobbyists, and manipulation of scientific evidence.
Sound familiar? Big Soda, motivated to protect its profits, has spent nearly $10 million to defeat Berkeley and San Francisco’s proposed soda taxes, bombarding us with billboards, ads, mailers, and paid canvassers.
So how do we beat Big Soda? Learn from tobacco control’s success.
#1: Start local. State and national measures, like California’s recent bill to put health warning labels on sugary drinks, have not succeeded, largely because politicians at this level are too dependent on campaign donations. Like tobacco, action at the local level will eventually turn the tide
#2: Engage your community. Tobacco measures succeeded because broad community coalitions organized to educate voters and local leaders. Berkeley’s Healthy Child Coalition started with the local NAACP chapter, joined by Latino leaders and key churches. We engaged parents and teachers, local businesses, and elected officials before beginning our city-wide door-to-door campaign to educate Berkeley residents.
Learning from the divisive tactics Big Soda used in Richmond in 2012, we recognized that winning requires standing together. Our primary goal is to address the health impacts of sugary drinks – especially the disproportionate impact on communities of color and kids – and to sustain public health programs, such as the school district’s hands-on garden and cooking classes. Nationally recognized and locally loved, these nutrition education programs began in the 1990s in response to disparities in chronic diseases in Berkeley. We need to win now or our school gardens will literally dry up, along with our vision of health equity.
#3: Make strategic decisions to increase the chance of winning. Remember that local efforts to create non-smoking sections in restaurants eventually led to a statewide ban on smoking in all indoor workplaces (including bars!). Berkeley’s campaign leaders made many difficult decisions like starting with a general tax, which only requires a simple majority to win. To advocate for allocation of funds, the Berkeley Healthy Child Coalition created an unprecedented community partnership to hold City Council accountable for our children’s health. Wrestling with what to include in the tax, we decided to focus on the biggest source of the problem — the industry that markets soda to our kids — while working with local businesses to promote healthier drinks.
If Measure D passes, it will be because of the hard work of hundreds of volunteers, the healthy debate within the campaign, and learning from the experiences of other cities. Regardless of the outcome, we have already won because we are united against Big Soda and educating our community about the health impacts of sugary drinks.
Remember what this campaign is about: 40% of our kids, and close to 50% of kids of color, will get diabetes — unless we do something. Let’s do something: Vote yes on Measures D and E.
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Democrat Seeking National Soda Tax
Revenue to go to Obamacare fund cut by Congress
August 1, 2014
By Elizabeth Harrington
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.) is seeking a national soda tax, an effort backed by leaders of the movement to ban smoking indoors and others who call carbonated beverages “toxic.”
DeLauro introduced the Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Tax Act, also known as the “SWEET Act,” on Wednesday, which would impose a 1 cent excise tax per teaspoon of caloric sweetener in soda, energy drinks, sports drinks, and sweet teas.
“This act is intended to discourage excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages by increasing the price of these products,” according to the text of the legislation.
“People want to be healthy and they want their kids to be healthy,” DeLauro said in a statement. “But we are in the midst of dual epidemics, with obesity and diabetes afflicting our nation and the related, astronomical health care costs.”
“There is a clear relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and a host of other health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay,” she said. “We are at a crucial tipping point and the SWEET Act will help correct the path we are currently on.”
Larry Cohen, a social justice activist and one of the leaders behind banning smoking in bars and restaurants, endorsed the bill.
“Soda and sugary beverages are the new tobacco and the fight to reduce their marketing and consumption is the next great public health battle,” Cohen said. “I helped create the nation’s first multi-city no-smoking laws and advocated for years to increase the tax on tobacco.”
“I see a sugar-sweetened beverage tax as just as valuable and just as groundbreaking,” he said.
Cohen also blamed soda companies for creating a “nightmare of chronic diseases” for children, the poor, and minorities.
Another supporter, Dr. David Wallinga, of Healthy Food Action, called soda a “toxic asset.” Marice Ashe, CEO and founder of ChangeLab Solutions in Oakland, Calif., said the bill would guide Americans into better dietary choices.
“Everyone deserves the opportunity to make choices that promote good health, and the SWEET Act is a tool to improve those opportunities,” she said.
The tax would be imposed on manufacturers, producers, or importers, amounting to roughly 16 cents per 20-ounce soda. The penny tax would increase in 2016, when it would be indexed to inflation.
The bill defines “sugar-sweetened beverages” as “any liquid intended for human consumption which contains a caloric sweetener,” and specifically identifies soft drinks, energy drinks, sweet teas, and sports drinks. Milk, soymilk, infant formula, and vegetable juice would be exempt.
The tax is targeted at Americans who are low-income, African American, Hispanic, and children, which the legislation calls “priority populations” due to higher rates of obesity and diabetes.
Revenue from the tax would go toward more nutrition and prevention programs, even though the bill admits such efforts have failed to curb childhood obesity.
“Despite significant public and private investment, childhood obesity rates remain high,” it said.
The revenue will be transferred to the “Prevention and Public Health Fund,” which was created by Obamacare. The initiative is currently researching, among other things, how to prevent old people and tribal elders from falling. The bill restricts funding for only diabetes, dental, dietary, and obesity research.
DeLauro’s bill would make up for funding that was cut from the Prevention and Public Health Fund in 2012. The fund was initially meant to spend $2 billion per year, beginning in FY 2015.
However, the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, which extendedthe payroll tax cut in 2012, cut the program by $6.25 billion. Congress limited its budget to $1 billion per year until 2017.
DeLauro, who has been pushing a soda tax since 2012, said additional funding is needed because health problems related to obesity cost $190 billion annually, placing much of the blame on soda.
Democrats have attempted similar efforts at the state level. California proposed adding a warning label to soda. A penny per ounce tax was voted down in Chicago after complaints that it would cost consumers almost $3 more for a 12-pack case of soda, and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s super-sized soda ban was also rejected.
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Democratic ‘veterans of the tobacco wars’ take aim at energy drinks
8/9/13
By Joel Gehrke
Senate Democrats brought energy drink industry representatives before Congress, with Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., comparing them to the heads of tobacco companies and faulting them for marketing beverages to children in a special appearance as witness at the hearing.
“We were all veterans of the tobacco wars,” Durbin said during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on energy drinks, in reference to colleagues who want to crack down on the industry. “We’re getting the same run around from these energy drink companies. They are openly, openly advertising to kids and denying it.”
“As the sale of energy drinks has grown, so has the alarming evidence that they pose potential health risks,” Durbin also said, noting that emergency room visits related to energy drinks jumped from 10,000 to 20,000 between 2007 and 2011. “Younger and younger people in America are exposed to higher and higher level of stimulants.”
Durbin is the second-ranked Democrat in the Senate, but the hearing was led at first by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and then Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who took over the gavel after Rockefeller’s opening statement.
“A number of companies are using marketing techniques highly appealing to teens, deliberately appealing to teens,” Rockefeller said. “The question I want to get at in this hearing is whether this is responsible corporate behavior.” Durbin and Blumenthal made clear they regard it as irresponsible, with Blumenthal suggesting Congress might increase regulations on the industry if the companies don’t voluntarily change their marketing practices.? Executives representing Red Bull North America, Rockstar, Inc., and Monster Beverage appeared at the hearing. “Voluntary compliance . . . would be a good step, and if further action is necessary we would consider it,” Blumenthal said. The American Beverage Association, which represents non-alcoholic beverage companies, responded to the hearing preemptively. “[W]hen you watch the news today – and every day? hereafter – and you find yourself reading an energy drink story, remember: energy drinks have been enjoyed safely by millions of people around the world for more than 25 years, and in the United States for more than 15 years,” the ABA’s Sip and Savor blog notes.
The Toxic Truth About Sugar with Robert Lustig, MD
1/31/12
Robert H. Lustig, MD, and a team of UCSF researchers argue that sugar should be controlled like alcohol and tobacco to protect public health. In a new report, they maintain that sugar is fueling a global obesity pandemic, contributing to 35 million deaths annually worldwide from non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
Watch
2/3/12
It’s not that I didn’t see it coming. I’ve been saying for years that the anti-tobacco blueprint would be rolled out to alcohol, food and fizzy drinks. It’s just that I didn’t think it would happen this quickly and when it did happen, I expected gales of laughter and an anti-nanny state backlash. This is manifestly not happening. That is a problem, but it isn’t the biggest problem. The truly terrifying thing is that the intellectual climate is so retarded that Nature can publish such an article without feeling any shame.
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Sugar ‘is toxic and must be regulated just like cigarettes’, claim scientists
2/2/12
A little is not a problem but a lot kills – slowly
Sugar ‘contributes to 35m deaths a year’ worldwide
Sugar is a poison and its sale should be as tightly regulated as cigarettes and alcohol, scientists say.
They warn that sugary foods and drinks are responsible for illnesses including obesity, heart disease, cancer and liver problems.
And they claim it contributes to 35million deaths a year worldwide and is so dangerous it should be controlled through taxation and legislation.
In an article entitled The Toxic Truth About Sugar, published in the journal? Nature, the scientists add: ‘A little is not a problem but a lot kills – slowly.’
The U.S. authors warn obesity is now a bigger problem than malnourishment across the world, and that sugar not only makes people fat but also changes the body’s metabolism, raises blood pressure, throws hormones off balance and harms the liver.
The damage done mirrors the effects of drinking too much alcohol – which the scientists point out is made from distilling sugar.
Taxing “Sin Foods” — Obesity Prevention and Public Health Policy
Gee Hee Hong, B.A.
Patrick Fox, M.S.W., Ph.D.
University of California San Francisco
San Francisco, CA
Dr. Chaufan reports serving as the vice-president of California Physicians Alliance (the California branch of Physicians for a National Health Program), serving on the editorial board of Social Medicine, and being a member of the American Diabetes Association and the American Sociological Association. Dr. Fox reports receiving grant support from the California Department of Public Health. No other potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
References
1.Brownell KD, Frieden TR. Ounces of prevention — the public policy case for taxes on sugared beverages. N Engl J Med 2009;360:1805-1808. [Free Full Text]2.Woolhandler S, Campbell T, Himmelstein DU. Costs of health care administration in the United States and Canada. N Engl J Med 2003;349:768-775. [Free Full Text]3.Anderson GF, Reinhardt UE, Hussey PS, Petrosyan V. It’s the Prices, stupid: why the United States is so different from other countries. Health Aff (Millwood) 2003;22:89-105. [Free Full Text]4.Chaufan C, Hong GH, Fox P. Economic perspectives on public health policies to reduce obesity in California — commissioned by the California Department of Public Health 2009:1-90 (unpublished).5.Cawley J. Markets and childhood obesity policy. Child Obes 2006;16:69-88.
New Tax on the Table for Government
Take-over of Health Care
Whether you call it soda or pop, another tax scheme has just emerged from the House Ways and Means Committee to fund a massive government run health care scheme.? This time it’s a 10 cent tax on each can of soda.? That number sounds familiar because President Obama pledged as recently as February that no family earning less than $250,000 would see its taxes increased by “a single dime. Not a single dime.”? I think we can safely assume that there are many families earning less than $250,000 who enjoy a cold soda now and again.
Sincerely,
Dick Armey
Chairman
FreedomWorks.org
Liberals want to tax soda to pay for government-run health care
During the presidential campaign of 2008, Barack Obama pledged that those making below $250,000 would not see their taxes go up one dime. He promised to cut taxes for the middle class and poor people. But if his friends in Congress get their way, President Obama will have a tough decision to make – whether to break his campaign pledge again in the form of higher taxes on soda and “sugary drinks” like sports and energy drinks.
Dick Armey
Chairman
FreedomWorks.org
Soft Drinks Being Singled Out as Cause of Obesity Problem; Analogy to Tobacco Seems Detrimental to Public Health Efforts
By Michael Siegel
According to the article: “In reports to be published in science journals this week, two groups of researchers hope to add evidence to the theory that soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks don’t just go hand-in-hand with obesity, but actually cause it.” …
“A small point? In reality, proving this would be a scientific leap that could help make the case for higher taxes on soda, restrictions on how and where it is sold — maybe even a surgeon general’s warning on labels.”
The Rest of the Story
Well of course you see less healthy intake of food and drink in persons who have high soda consumption. And of course people who drink healthier beverages like water and low-fat milk are more likely to eat vegetables and less likely to eat fast food. It doesn’t take rocket science to figure out that people who drink a lot of soda are, in general, going to have poorer overall nutrition than those who drink a lot of water, unsweetened tea, and skim milk.
When was the last time you saw a guy guzzle down 3 cans of beer while munching on a modest portion of Wheat Thins? And when was the last time you saw someone drinking skim milk to wash down a hefty serving of Hostess Twinkies?
But that is exactly the point. Drinking a lot of soda is simply a marker of poor overall nutrition. And it is poor overall nutrition (combined with insufficient exercise and physical activity) that is responsible for obesity, not any singular effect of soda, or any other particular food or drink item for that matter.
It appears to me that the fervor to make this analogy between obesity and tobacco-related disease has resulted in an overly simplistic view of this public health problem that is spawning a framing of the issue that is destined for failure.
While I don’t generally agree with much of what the food industry has to say (although I concede the general point that Almond Joy has nuts and Mounds don’t), I do agree with the beverage industry spokesperson who suggested that comparing soda and obesity to tobacco and lung cancer is a baseless crusade.
First of all, while tobacco can be a singular cause of lung cancer (i.e., you can get lung cancer merely from smoking), soda is not a singular cause of obesity. For people who drink a lot of soda but otherwise are careful about their nutrition and who also get sufficient exercise, obesity is not a problem. In other words, soda in and of itself does not cause obesity. It cannot do it alone. Unlike cigarettes.
Second of all, there is not really a healthy level of cigarette consumption. It’s not the case that smoking 1/2 pack of cigarettes per day is perfectly healthy but one or more packs per day is harmful. In contrast, if you drink soda in moderation you will not suffer any health impacts.
Third of all, cigarettes are addictive and contain a psychoactive chemical that crosses the blood-brain barrier, a chemical whose level in cigarettes if finely controlled by the manufacturer to enhance addiction. While caffeine has some addictive qualities, it is not at all addictive on the scale of nicotine.
Fourth, smoking is one of only a few exposures that cause lung cancer. Approximately 85% of lung cancer cases are directly attributable to cigarettes. But it is unlikely that any cases of obesity can be directly attributed solely to soft drinks. There are a host of exposures that contribute, in a multi-factorial way, to cause obesity.
It is convenient to pick a scapegoat upon which to blame the nation’s obesity problem because it avoids a lot of the difficult work that needs to be done. Singling out soda makes it easy. We just treat soda like cigarettes. Tax it to death. Put a stigma on its use. Put warning labels on it.
But such an approach would take the focus off the real problem: the political, economic, geographic, social, and cultural factors that contribute to poor nutrition and to a dismal lack of adequate physical activity, which combine to create conditions in which caloric intake greatly exceeds caloric expenditure for a majority of the population.
While I am not arguing that soda consumption should not be addressed as part of any larger solution to the obesity problem, I do not see any wisdom in making it the focus of our efforts. But I do see the potential for a lot of damage. Namely, it will likely create a distraction from the larger problems that need to be addressed.
It’s just not as simple as putting a tax on soda and a warning label on Coke and Pepsi. It’s not as simple as suing soda manufacturers for selling their products to kids in schools and causing children to become obese.
In fact, even if soda were to be completely banned today, I doubt that the obesity problem would be solved. You have to drink something, and with poor nutritional habits, kids would likely substitute other high-calorie drinks for the soda.
If you walk around Boston, the first thing you may notice is that food choices are not equally distributed geographically. The poorer neighborhoods simply do not have access to highly nutritious food choices. Just compare Roxbury and the Back Bay. It’s easy to eat healthy in Back Bay. Not so easy in Roxbury. And putting warning labels or high taxes on soda simply isn’t going to solve that problem.
And we live in an era where kids can get all the entertainment they want just sitting around a television set. When I was a kid, we just had Atari. But how many games of Breakout could you play before you needed to go outside and run around? Now, you’ve got Game Boy, Nintendo, Game Cube, Play Station, Play Station 2, XBox, and XBox 360: hours of entertainment and you don’t have to leave the comfort of your own living room. And that’s before you even consider computer games, chatrooms, or reading and commenting on blogs of all things.
Singling out soda may make addressing the obesity problem easy, but it doesn’t make it effective. And I think the danger is that this approach threatens to distract attention from the complex, multifactorial nature of the problem and the many avenues that must be addressed to tackle it effectively.
I think the analogy to tobacco was perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to the obesity control movement. They are just not the same type of problem, and shouldn’t be treated that way.
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