The New Tax in Town
The idea of beginning a tax on sugary drinks is nowhere near a new one. Many people immediately jump to soda whenever they hear this idea, and that’s where most people see the problem surrounding the sugary drink debate. I see the problem not with the products themselves but how they are abused to the point where they can become a problem to the consumer. Like most things, it’s all good in moderation but once you start to have three to four cans or bottles a day it can start to be an issue. Thats where this proposed tax is supposed to come in and save the day. Or so that’s what most of us have been told, and some of us believe. But maybe this new tax doesn’t need to have a place in our society. Sin taxes are seen as a
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If the idea was to get people to not drink the these beverages as much as we are used to then a tax would be going at it all wrong. It would be a better idea to have more marketing or information about the benefits of limiting their sugary drink intake. I don’t even think I have ever seen an ad or service announcement about not drinking soda. Everything shown to us is to encourage us to go to the store and pick up the pack of soda or a huge bottle of gatorade. But there are ads against smoking and drinking shown all the time. Ads are about awareness and are an easier approach to the public because it’s a win-win (Clemmit). These companies don’t lose customers to high taxes and the public learn some of the health issues that come with most of the products. If we were going to put the same taxes on sugary drinks they would have to be treated the same. “If you want to tax the hell out of soda, then you need to make people think that’s a drug, not a beverage - that downing a Coke is just like puffing on a cigarette (Engber 641). This proposed tax on these sugary drinks is a little too far fetched for most of the American people to get behind. With an unfair tax to many businesses and treatment related to alcohol and tobacco, this tax wouldn’t make too many people happy. America loves many things, such as sugary drinks, and to treat them the same as these big cancer causing products just doesn’t fly too well. There are plenty of other reasonable techniques that we can use to get the people of this country to agree on appropriate amounts of sodas and other forms of sugary drinks are safe to
Consumers think that it is awful that they have to pay for someone else’s health care while that person may just as well be drinking twelve cans of soda daily and continually destroying their health. (“Should there be a”, n.d.) These consumers are hoping the soda tax will encourage people to stop abusing soda and at the same time lowering the obesity rate in our country, which now about 66% of our population. Some commenters also said that the government is doing the right thing to try and stop this
Sugar addiction is a problem that has been in our society for many years. In today's world this type of addiction is being composed into drinks. Sugary drinks are found everywhere from local stores, to in home refrigerators. Sodas, juices, and energy drinks, all fall under unhealthy remedies to thirst. Sugar addiction can only restrain us from accomplishing healthy goals in life. Sugary drinks can lead to harming one's body. Over the past few years, many cities and states have considered taxing sodas and other sugary beverages. Sugary drinks must be tax due to its unhealthy components and addiction.
If this happened, it would presumably effect people who are in poverty from buying soda, but what about all the other products out there? They would have to tax cane sugar or high-fructose corn syrup itself. These taxes would have to be very broad. If the taxes were so high that people would stop buying sugary beverages this would still not solve obesity or diabetes. The majority of my family drinks soda to what I consider to be excess; some drink over 6 cans a day; most of them also happen to be obese and have type 2 diabetes. I doubt paying extra would cause them to stop drinking these beverages.
I already stated in questions one above the New York City limitation on the size of sodas has the same constitutional issues with the Philadelphia “Soda Tax”, both are unconstitutional even the major justified that it will be to promote better health of the population of New York, no law can really dictate what people has to put in their body. The tax is discriminatory as it only targeted on big sodas. The only difference between the two is that the New York City limitation on the size of sodas is not to raise any revenue and there was no tax per size or ounce while the Philadelphia “ soda Tax “ is mainly to boost the state revenue.
The debate on weather sugary drinks, especially soda, should be taxed or not has been a topic for years. Some people believe that they should be taxed for the improvement of health while on the other hand some people think that taxing the drinks won't do much and actually hurt people. Taxing sugary drinks is helpful to those who have a hard time with temptation for the drinks. In the article "Do Soda Taxes Really Work?" Sifferlin states that when researchers looked at Berkeley residents, they found that when taxing soda started "sales of sugary-sweetened drinks fell by close 10% and sales of water increased in Berkeley by about 16%" (4) Just by the percent difference rasing prices on soda made people decide against buying the sweet drinks,
Today, research asserts soda is one of the leading causes of poor health outcomes in the United States. People define soda as carbonated beverages, or soft drinks, or fizzy drinks. A significant relationship exists between the consumption of carbonated drinks and obesity, type 2 diabetes and dental caries in the United States (Gollust et al., 52). Tax on soda is considered as a government’s intervention to regulate the consumption of these kinds of drinks. In fact, soda should be taxed in the United States because it discourages the consumption of soda, makes people healthier, and raises government funds.
I honestly believe Cook County should have a soda tax. It is a very poor County given the population desity. Poor physical health is very common in low-income communities.(Four Ways That Poverty Hurts Americans' Long-Term Health.) Given this, an incentive to not buy soda in a County such as Cook seems to make a lot of sense. In my opinion the country should
Sugar tax will not help to solve health or budget issues to reduce debt. Sugar has caused many problems such as revenue and health problems. Firstly, sugar drinks has a high cost on the society, and the overconsumption of sugar causes lots of health problems such as type 2 diabetes, obesity, tooth decay and heart diseases “Already we know that the burden of obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases are greater among population of socioeconomic status “ (Riediger,year, para 14). Sugar is addiction and it mainly affects to people who have low incomes , not because they can’t buy , but they don’t have enough knowledge on how it might affect them back since they have a low literacy even though, dozen of cities and states have launched public
If you take one look at an average adults daily sugar consumption that is encouraged by these companies, you will soon be raising your eyebrows too. 14.6 kilograms…. That’s how much sugar the average Australian soft drink lover is consuming every year from soft drinks alone, this is equivalent to indulging in three bags of potatoes, instead filled with pure sugar. This huge amount of sugar intake is leading to high rates of overweight and obesity which intern lead to type two diabetes, heart disease and cancers. But there’s a simple way to reduce sugary drink consumption and that’s by increasing the price through a 20 percent tax on sugar drinks. This would decrease the consumption of sugary drinks and also reduce the rates of overweight and obesity, therefor reducing the amount of Australians with type 2 diabetes, heart disease and
As William Shughart states in the article: “Should There Be a Tax on Soda and Other Sugary Drinks?”, published in the Wall Street Journal “taxes on sugary beverages are regressive and would hurt the poor”. While it is true that sodas and sugary beverage are the most consumed by low income working family; however, the amount of tax per ounce and the effect aren’t harming the poor families. In fact, it is the opposite; they are the biggest beneficiary of this tax in the short and the long term. First, the tax is not big enough to hurt the pocketbooks of the poor. In fact, it is around “1.5 cents per-ounce” in Philadelphia (Cuellar). Moreover, we could never consider the tax harmful, if we understand the aim of such a sin tax and we remember the nature of the taxed product. Actually, considering the health effect of consuming it, the taxed product is indeed the real harm. The tax will prevent the poor and the working families from consuming soda drinks in big quantities, and protect them from the consequences of excessive sugar consumption. Accordingly, because poor and low income families had suffered the most from the consumption of sugary beverages, by high rates of diabetes diseases and obesity, we will see the biggest positive changes in those
This law would have somewhat of a domino effect as it would also affect fast food chain restaurants as they wouldn’t make as much money with them losing money on the soda machines they purchase. On the contrary, the soda tax would help with “medical costs for overweight and obesity alone are estimated to be $147 billion or 9.1% of U.S. health care expenditures with half these costs paid for publicly through the Medicare and Medicaid programs”(Brownell). This quote means medical programs will invest that money into other people who have more severe conditions and not use them on some conditions that could’ve been prevented.
For starters,if you do tax soda is will not effective some people.If you do add taxes to soda it obesity won’t end.Also if you add taxes to soda people will not make any better choices and also since people won’t make better choices people can find other stuff that they will enjoy and then they have to tax that as well until everything is taxed.People can find other sugary drinks if they tax soda.People can just buy energy drinks that does not taste bad and they can just drink that instead of soda if they tax soda.
Today, research asserts soda is one of the leading causes of poor health outcomes in the United States. People define soda as carbonated beverages, or soft drinks, or fizzy drinks. A significant relationship exists between the consumption of carbonated drinks and obesity, type 2 diabetes and dental caries in the United States (Gollust et al., 52). Tax on soda is considered as a government intervention to regulate the consumption of these kinds of drinks. In fact, soda should be taxed in the United States because it discourages the consumption of soda, makes people healthier, and raises government funds.
“Sin” taxes have been proven as a way to curtail known unhealthy behaviors. Soda taxes are most accepted if taxes collected are earmarked for health specific programs (Chaufin et al., 2010). The cons are the consumers are the voters and taxing may equate to loss of votes, taxing may not be equitable to individuals that do not have the disease, and finally, an undue burden may be placed on lower socio-economic demographics as these groups often have limited access to food vendors that primarily sale what would be considered taxed foods. Though these sin taxes are proven to work well with tobacco and alcohol consumption, altering a persons’ diet needs to be more individualized and realistically approached. Lower socio-economic individuals should not feel added burden as a tax; which would be a negative impact (Kuchar et al., 2005). Legality issues are regarded as low, but would require state government support to enact. This would likely not be popularly accepted and have a minimal impact for any increase in tax rate.
Considering that soft drinks are one of the most popular drinks to a lot of people all around the world, unfortunately, a lot of them love to drink it almost every day and may not live without it. Soda becomes addictive, preventing one from drinking what the body needs the most which is water. In the market, there is a infinite amount of choices with multiple varieties of flavors, different tastes, ranges from classic soda to diet soda. However, consumers do not recognize clearly the negative effect of soft drinks that have a high chance of eroding their health away. Some of these examples include dental erosion, energy intake, obesity and other health issues. Nowadays, people live a healthy life to avoid health problems, so taxes on soft