Is big soda the next big tobacco?
Critics say that the soda industry is behaving much like the tobacco industry of yesterday: marketing sugary drinks to children, claiming the products are healthy or at least harmless, and lobbying heavily to prevent change.
The industry’s main counterclaim is that there are major differences between cigarettes and the products they sell. They contend that, in moderate quantities, soda is neither harmful, nor addictive.
However, the "average" American drinks about 50 gallons of soda per year. That is hardly moderate by any measure. When you consider that averages are obtained by combining high and low rates of consumption. That means, basically, that half of folks who drink soda drink less than 50 gallons a year. Which means that heavy soda drinkers likely drink more than 50 gallons a year.
Such a rate of soda consumption is anything but moderate. More and more studies support the idea that soda consumption plays an important role in the exploding levels of childhood obesity, and what was once called "adult onset" diabetes among children.
Taxing soda was one option considered to help pay for health care reform. The Joint Committee on Taxation projected that a 3-cent tax on each sweetened 12-ounce soda would generate revenues of $51.6 billion over ten years. President Obama has said that such a tax is “an idea that we should be exploring. There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda.”
Not surprisingly, the beverage industry considers taxing soda, however modestly, to be a bad idea. Susan Neely, the president of the American Beverage Association, acknowledges that obesity is a problem but says: “If you’re trying to manage people being overweight you need a variety of behavior changes to achieve energy balance — it can’t be done by eliminating one food from the diet.”
Yach doesn’t offer any data to support his claim that people who stopped drinking soda would just eat other, equally empty calories to replace the sugar in their soda.
In fact, more and more public health advocates are backing the idea of a tax on soda, similar to those levied on tobacco, gasoline and alcoholic beverages. Proponents of a soda tax point out that sugared beverages are the No. 1 source of calories in the American diet, comprising 7 percent of the average daily calorie intake, and up to 10 percent for children and teenagers, according to government surveys. These calories, they say, are worse than useless — they are empty calories that merely increase a daily intake that is already too high.
Some states already have small taxes in place on soda. Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia, and Chicago impose a 3 percent retail tax on soda. 12 other states proposed taxes on soda in 2009, though none were approved. Mississippi is mulling a bill that would tax the syrup manufacturers use to sweeten soda; the mayor of Philadelphia is considering a tax on soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks, whiles New York’s Gov. David Paterson has expressed his willingness to propose a penny-per-ounce tax on sugared beverages in his 2011 budget. Below is a public service ad from the massive soda-awareness campaign by the New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
The public health strategy is obviously modeled on the public fight to reduce tobacco use. Dr. Frieden promoted a soda tax when he served as a health commissioner. He sees a number of useful similarities between the fights to reduce soda use with those to reduce tobacco use: “There are aspects of the food industry that are reminiscent of tobacco — the sowing of doubt where there’s no reasonable doubt, funding of front groups, use of so-called experts, claims that new products which are safer for consumers are available, and the claim that they are not marketing to children.”
The public war to reduce tobacco use has largely been successful. The rate of smoking in America has been cut in half, half of all smokers have quit, and tobacco money pays for strong public campaigns against smoking and tobacco.
In the case of tobacco, even in the face of increasingly overwhelming evidence of tobacco’s health risks, the big tobacco companies tried to question the science. So it is that, in the face of increasingly stark evidence linking soda consumption to childhood obesity, the big soda companies contend that science does not back up the assertion that childhood obesity is even partly caused by soda consumption. They have sought to make the discussion about personal choice and freedom.
Critics also point to big soda’s lobbying efforts to downplay the connection between soda, obesity and other diseases. They point out that, much like the tobacco industry, the soda industry hires people like J. Justin Wilson, a self-proclaimed “libertarian consumer advocate” and senior research analyst the the industry-sponsored "Center for Consumer Freedom." Wilson naturally says things like: “Soda has calories, and food with calories causes people to put on weight when consumed in excess. But there is no unique link between soda and obesity.”
Besides, says Ms. Neely, the industry is taking measures: “The beverage industry supports real solutions to obesity and continues to step up to do its part. We’ve removed full-calorie soft drinks from schools across the country and, in support of Mrs. Obama’s initiative, will place the full calories for our products on the front of our containers.”
The problem, according to Dr. Frieden, is that, “Obesity is a major health problem that’s getting worse, and it’s clear that exhorting individuals to eat less and exercise more is not going to turn things around.”
Perhaps, as with tobacco, the time has come to tax soda in the interest of public health.
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