Opinion Makers is an exclusive MedPage Today video series, presenting leaders from all areas of medicine, offering their views on current topics in clinical care, research, and policy.
Soda taxes have been in the headlines a lot lately. After Berkeley became the first U.S. city to approve such a tax, other cities have been taking notice. Philadelphia is looking to institute a tax on distributors to raise money for schools, but they've faced opposition from the American Beverage Association, which refers to the tax as a "grocery tax." San Francisco and Oakland are set to put the soda tax before voters this year.
In this video, Kelly Brownell, MD, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke, discusses the benefits of a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and why he thinks that what happened at Berkeley is likely to happen in other places around the nation.
I'm delighted to have the opportunity to speak to you today about taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages. In particular we've argued for a tax of 1 penny per ounce on any beverage with added sugar. Now, why would one do this?
Well first, sugar-sweetened beverages, what used to be just sodas but now there are a wide range of beverages including energy drinks, sports drinks, sweetened teas, and the like are the single greatest source of added sugar in the American diet.
The biology of how these affect the body has been worked out and it's been shown to be quite negative. And also a little-known fact is that people don't tend to compensate very well for calories when they get delivered in liquid form. You just don't feel as full and you're less likely to adjust your calories in response to overdoing it on beverages like these.
If one is going to address sugar-sweetened beverages, why think about taxes? There are a lot of things one could possibly do. The tobacco experience is an interesting precedent because the health economists have figured that of all the different things done to address tobacco in the United States and elsewhere, taxes are the single most effective way of reducing smoking and can have a profound effect.
We also know from economists that sugar beverage consumption will decrease if changes in price are made. So the estimates are that a 1 penny per ounce tax would increase price between 15 and 20% and that should decrease consumption between 15 and 20%. And that's enough to produce a public health benefit. Also the taxes can produce considerable revenue. In the state of California alone for example a 1 penny per ounce tax would raise more than a billion dollars a year in revenue. And if that money were earmarked for programs related to health, there could be additional benefit.
Where do things stand with taxes? A number of countries around the world have enacted such taxes, the most recent one being Mexico. And even though the Mexico tax was only about half of the level that we've recommended and even to the point where I was a little worried whether there would be a change in consumption because the tax was so low, there still was an effect on consumption and more people began drinking water. So that was a very positive development.
Berkeley, California has passed the tax in the United States and a lot of other places were likely to follow. The sugar beverage industry has dismissed Berkeley as being an outlier. But I think Berkeley is much more of a forecaster than an outlier, they were among the first to enact a number of public health measures. And so I expect these things will spread around the United States. And one example of that is the fact that the city of Philadelphia with the charge being led by the mayor is now considering a tax three times as high as the one that we've recommended. And there's a likelihood that that will pass in Philadelphia.
So I think these are signs of what's about to happen in the United States and then increasingly around the world. So where are things going? Different people are framing the taxes in different ways. Some places they're framing them as addressing childhood obesity. Others are framing it as Berkeley did, as not letting big soda rule our lives. And in the case of Philadelphia it's all about raising money to support programs for early childhood education.
As these different frames are tested we and others will find out more about what frames will work the best. Also people would experiment with different levels of taxes. And then I think the taxes at some point will be as widespread and as routine as are licensed tobacco taxes. Legislators will probably begin thinking about applying the taxes not just to a category of food like the sugar-sweetened beverages but perhaps to a constituent in the food supply, let's say sugar. And all of these things I feel are very positive elements; the government acting in a responsible way to help protect public health. And as I said I expect a growing public acceptance of these taxes that we'll see them more and more and more as time goes forward.
Opinion Makers: Why We Need a Soda Tax
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