Q:Is the NY Soda Tax a Good Idea?
A: Yes and No!
Have you heard about plans for a NY State tax on calorie laden soda? Diet sodas, sports drinks and other beverages like “vitamin waters” will be exempt from the tax.
Ths proposed soda tax is a great illustration of the low Food IQ of government health officials in NY state. They’ve gotten sucked into the mythology of counting calories. While we can all agree that sodas are one of the big culprits in declining children’s health and the obesity crisis, they are just a small fraction of the hazardous beverages that millions of New Yorkers drink every day. Why not tax every beverage that does harm to our health?
Some people are against the soda tax because they feel that they should be able to drink whatever beverage they want unhindered by costly taxes. Personal responsibility, they like to call it. Well that’s fine and dandy if I don’t have to cover the cost of your poor health that is a result from swilling this stuff! The cost of chronic diseases connected to diet impacts not only people who are disabled by or die from these conditions but all of us. We all pay taxes to care for those affected individuals covered by Medicare and Medicaid. The more people we lose to chronic disease caused by diet and lifestyle, the more our state suffers in terms of lost productivity, lost income and, therefore, lost taxes that could fund some of the state’s priorities, including providing access to health care for all residents.
To only tax sodas based on calories perpetuates misinformation. The food industry would be very happy if we don’t tax Diet Coke and Vitamin Water, Diet Pepsi and Gatorade and even Sunny Delight! Coke and Pepsi have been trying to market these useless, hazardous beverages as health drinks for a while, they’ve been working hard to get them into schools too. NY is playing right into their hands by this tax.
We don’t just tax regular cigarettes, we tax the light versions too. Counting grams of tar and nicotine was a strategy that the tobacco industry used to sell more cigarettes. The same game is being played by the food companies when they promote “healthIER” versions of junk!
Like second hand smoke from cigarettes, these hazardous beverages have side effects. Kids in classrooms who are bouncing off the walls from drinking beverages with chemicals and colors impact a teacher’s ability to teach and every student’s ability learn. That costs us money in the long run too. Many of these drinks are low calorie, calories are not the real issue here, chemicals are. These beverages do not provide nourishment, they provide profits to food companies at the expense of our health.
Here’s a better plan to help cover the costs of low Food IQ in NY state. Why not expand this tax to every beverage that is not 100% juice, milk or water? (By water, I mean the real kind: H2O, no additives!) By doing this, you discourage useless, hazardous beverage consumption and create some revenue to cover the costs of illnesses that that are connected to poor diet. The choice is still yours to drink what you like, the only difference is that you’ll start to pay the real cost of these beverages.
