Statisticians like to say: "What gets measured gets done." Well, everyone out there opposed to putting a tax on sugary soft drinks, measure this! The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) recently published their latest statistics on health. Once again, when it comes to obesity, the U.S. is number one; at 34 percent we are the most obese nation of all those measured. And, once again, Japan is last on the list; only 3 percent of the Japanese population is obese. Japan also has the highest life expectancy (82.7 years) and the lowest incidence of heart disease, stroke and measured cancers.
But wait a minute! Aren't those diseases also linked to smoking? And don't the Japanese smoke a lot more than Americans? Yes, they do -- 26 percent of all Japanese adults, and 40 percent of Japanese males, report smoking every day, while in the U.S. less than 18 percent of the adult population currently smokes. (Source: OECD.)
There is no question about it, smoking is bad for your health. But obesity is, perhaps, worse. And yet, we heavily tax tobacco but not soda, and are allowing Big Food to win the fight against an impactful soda tax.
We are feeding the worst of the worst of the "profit at any cost" industries when we accept not heavily taxing caloric, sweetened soft drinks. Monsanto's genetically modified corn seed grows the cheap, heavily subsidized corn that gets processed into Archer Daniels Midland's cheap, heavily-subsidized high fructose corn syrup that becomes the key ingredient in cheap, heavily subsidized soda beverages. These products are such a high profit center for Big Food that the money they spend to aggressively lobby against a substantial soda tax is well-spent. (See: "The Hundred Year Diet," page 251.)
There is no dispute that heavily taxing an unhealthy product has a powerful impact. "Smoking and Health:, Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service" was published on January 11, 1964. Just as with sugary soft drinks today, that cigarette smoking is hazardous to your health wasn't really new information -- in 1958, 44 percent of Americans said they believed smoking caused cancer. But the groundbreaking report made it official, and by 1968, 78 percent of Americans believed that smoking was dangerous for their health. This made little difference, however, and people continued to smoke anyway. The higher taxes on every pack was part of the reason, along with the new anti-smoking laws, that led to the dramatic decrease in smoking in America. (WHO Report on the Global Tobacco Epidemic, 2009: Implementing Smoke Free Environments.)
In 1965, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began keeping records, 42.5 percent of the adult population smoked. As taxes increased, smoking began to heavily decline. In 1987, the figure fell below 30 percent, and by 2007 less than 20 percent of adult Americans smoked. As previously mentioned, that figure is currently below 18 percent. Cigarettes are currently taxed in all states on a discretionary basis. The federal government taxes every pack an additional $1.01, the result of the single largest federal tax hike on tobacco in U.S. history -- an increase of 62 cents per pack -- that went into effect in April 2009. And although anti-smoking laws undoubtedly also contributed to the decline, the World Health Organization reports that for every 10 percent increase in the cigarette tax, there is a corresponding 4 percent decrease in consumption. (See WHO Report, above.)
It has been argued that unlike tobacco, soda is food. But can something that contains no nutritive benefit and provides no feeling of satiety really be categorized as food? Let's call it what it is -- high fructose corn syrup processed with artificial ingredients and water -- the very opposite of food. This nonfood has hidden subsidies that keep it the cheapest thing in the market basket. Are fresh vegetables subsidized? Are fruits? Tax soda, and no one loses except Big Food, Big Pharma and Big Weight Loss.
A soda tax is just one of many things that should be done to reverse the obesity epidemic, but it is something concrete and can lead to so much more. Revenues could help fund physical education and playgrounds, educate the next generation about nutrition, and teach basic cooking skills. Why soda and not other highly subsidized processed beverages or snack foods? Because each adult in America consumes, on average, about 1 million calories a year, and about 7 percent of those calories come from cheap, carbonated soft drinks. Decreasing our current rate of consumption by 10 percent would save an average of 7,000 calories per person annually, and the obesity epidemic, a deadly trend that has been heading in the wrong direction for three decades, would begin to reverse. We would begin to take back control of our health. (Barry M. Popkin, et al, "A new proposed guidance system for beverage consumption in the United States," American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 83 (2006): 529-42.)
Here's the argument Big Food likes best: You can't tax soda because it's a regressive tax, and will be unfair to the poor. It's the same tactic used by the tobacco industry. But if you want to help the poor, refuse those subsidies (you can give them to poor vegetable farmers) and price soda fairly. Remember that we only have one progressive tax in this country, and that's the income tax. Every single other tax is regressive and hurts the poor more than the rich -- the only difference is that a soda tax can help them -- help all of us -- too.
References: OECD Factbook, 2009