Obesity: A Tax Analysis

Obesity is on the rise as one of the nation’s leading epidemics. Obesity is to blame for bringing about diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers. To combat obesity, politicians have looked for ways to go after the contributors at blame. One of them being sugary beverages. Like tobacco, lawmakers have sought out ways to tax sugar sweetened beverages consumers. In fact, "36 % of their American survey participants supported a tax as high as 20 % on sugar-sweetened beverages and 39 % said that such a tax would cause them to reduce their consumption” (Yngve, Haapala, Hodge, Mcneill, & Tseng, 2012). With the taxation, the hope would be that soft drinks would soon become the dietary version of the cigarette. During the 2012 elections two cities in the state of California put forth sugar sweetened beverage (SSB) tax propositions on the ballot. With taxation would come decrease in consumption especially among the young, which studies have shown lead to weight loss (Jou, Niederdeppe, Barry, & Gollust, 2014). The propositions ultimately failed due to vague proposition wording and tax revenue distribution. The propositions served as a template. As long as the money raised went to health programs, voters were willing to pay the tax. …show more content…
I don’t believe we need the government taxing beverages to discourage consumption. Rather than taxing the consumer, why not tax the manufacturer. Via that tax revenue, we’d be able to develop more public health