Editor’s note: This commentary is by Peter Sterling, who is the director of the Vermont Campaign for Health Care Security. He is also the volunteer co-chair of the Alliance for a Healthier Vermont, a 30-member coalition of health care providers and consumer advocates support a sugar sweetened beverage excise tax.
[U]VM economics professor and frequent consultant to the business community Art Woolf has authored an opinion piece, “How Fair is a Soda Tax?” I agree with his view through his economist’s lens that it will raise the price of sugary drinks and therefore discourage overconsumption. However, the remainder of his commentary on the public health impacts of the excess consumption of sugary drinks and the related impacts of obesity are far off the mark which is not surprising since many of his clients profit handsomely from the sale of these drinks.
As background, a 20 ounce Mountain Dew has 19.25 teaspoons of sugar and even what some would call a “healthy” drink like a 20 ounce Nantucket Nectar’s Cranberry has 17.5 teaspoons of added sugar. That’s a lot of added sugar considering the American Heart Association’s guidelines for daily added sugar is six teaspoons for women, nine teaspoons for men and only about three teaspoons for kids.
Consumption of these sugary drinks has exploded over the last 50 years and a study in the Journal of Public Health Nutrition estimates that sugary drinks account for at least one-fifth of the weight gained between 1977 and 2007 in the U.S. This over consumption is particularly acute among teenagers: boys ages 12-19 drink 108 gallons of sugary drinks annually while girls the same age drink 77 gallons a year.
When Mr. Woolf questions, “How fair is a soda tax,” I think the more accurate question is how fair is it without one? The beverage industry has long targeted low-income communities with its cheap drinks and the result is low-income people are suffering disproportionately from obesity and its related diseases. They are twice as likely to be obese, three times more likely to have diabetes and four times more likely to have a heart attack.
Though the tax is a regressive one, it’s important to note that no one needs a sugary drink (as opposed to, say, the regressive tax on gasoline that everyone uses that Mr. Woolf fails to mention) because they provide no nutrition that someone couldn’t otherwise get from a normal diet. That’s part of the reason why advocates for the poor like the Vermont Low Income Advocacy Council and the Health Care Advocates Office, in addition to dozens of doctors, dentists, nurses, dental hygienists and other health care providers serving the poor support this tax.
The beverage industry has long targeted low-income communities with its cheap drinks and the result is low-income people are suffering disproportionately from obesity and its related diseases.
Another reason, most of the low-income community is behind this is because the revenue is slated to fund programs to assist low- and middle-income Vermonters such as making health care more affordable and improving access to healthier foods. That’s fair.
Mr. Woolf points out that Vermont’s 25 percent obesity rate is relatively low compared to other states but fails to mention that it’s higher than almost every other industrialized country and every single African or Asian nation. By comparison, France, Italy and Sweden have obesity rates around 10 percent.
Contrary to Mr Woolf’s assertion, the scientific literature is conclusive that an excise tax would result in decreased consumption of sugary drinks in the range of 10 percent in addition to significant weight loss. For example the USDA found that “that a 20% price increase would, over a year, result in a 3.8lb weight loss for adults and a 4.5lb weight loss for children.” There is no peer-reviewed study that backs up Mr. Woolf’s assertion that people would eat other sugary foods to replace the sugar from sugary drinks.
Mr. Woolf veers far from his expertise as an economist when he concludes, “How much should government decide what we put in our mouths? Or should our personal choices about what we choose to eat or drink be just that — personal choices?” This tax does not prohibit anyone from buying a Pepsi or a Gatorade. No one is talking about banning these drinks. As with Vermont’s existing tobacco excise tax, any consumer is still free to make the decision to allocate their resources to buy these products if they choose to do so. But Mr. Woolf also ignores the longstanding history of our government in stepping in to regulate products we consume in the name of public health such as banning pesticides to imposing tobacco taxes designed to decrease consumption among youth.
As someone who has worked in the public health field for the last 10 years assisting low- and middle-income Vermonters seeking access to health care, I can think of no other issue that is more important than taxing sugary drinks in order to combat the obesity crisis that is crippling our health care system and causing significant health impacts to tens of thousands of Vermonters. It won’t solve the entire obesity problem, but it is a good way to begin to address it by taking on one of the biggest contributors and funding measures to prevent obesity and improve health for all Vermonters.
