Added sugar leads to profound health risks
by Brian Leubitz
Last year, under a flood of beverage industry money, two proposed sugary beverage taxes were easily defeated in Richmond and El Monte. However, Californians are still wary of the health risks that they present. To wit:
California voters endorse a proposal to require beverage companies to post a health-warning label on sodas and sugary drinks to alert consumers that their daily consumption contributes to diabetes, obesity and tooth decay. Statewide 74% of voters back this requirement, of whom 52% do so strongly. Support is bipartisan, with large majorities of Democrats (80%), Republicans (64%) and non-partisans (75%) endorsing the idea.
The poll also finds continuing support among the statewide voting public to tax the sale of sodas and other sugary drinks and use its proceeds for school nutrition and physical activity programs for kids. Two in three voters (67%) favor this proposal. The results are similar to a Field Poll completed in late 2012, which found 68% of voters statewide supporting such a tax. (Field (PDF))
Unfortunately, the beverage industry isn’t keen on leaving anything to chance. And now San Francisco, led by Supervisors Scott Wiener, Eric Mar and Malia Cohen, are looking to put exactly such a measure on the ballot for November. The statewide poll found that within the San Francisco Bay Area, 78% of residents favor a soda tax to fund school nutrition and physical activity programs to reduce diabetes. San Francisco voters support it, but will all that Coke and Pepsi money be enough to confuse the issue.
Look, there are clearly some issues with the regressiveness of the sugar beverage tax. I don’t have the exact figures on this, but one would expect to see that under the proposed measure, low to middle income San Franciscans would pay a far larger share of the tax than for other taxes. However, that is also the case with tobacco taxes, yet we tolerate those. The fact is that while sugary beverages have not yet been proved to be as dangerous as tobacco, they carry very severe health risks. The Boston Public Health Commission has some startling statistics.
One, 20-oz bottle of regular soda has about 16 teaspoons of sugar. Teens consume twice as much soda as they do milk. On an average day, 80% of youth consume a sugary drink. A single, 20-ounce bottle of regular soda has about 16 teaspoons of sugar. The average person consumes almost 100 pounds of sugar a year, with the single biggest source being sodas. The American Heart Association recommends that the maximum daily intake of added sugars be no more than 4.5 teaspoons for teens aged 12-19. Did you know, health costs of obesity in the United States are $147 billion annually? That’s like buying everyone in the U.S. an iPad.
Economists call such taxes a case of “internalizing externalities.” In other words, the government has been subsidizing these beverages, in the form of health care, for years. It is now time to include those costs in the price of the beverage.