Soda Tax Analysis

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.

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.

The ban on larger sodas would only make people buy more than one soda to satisfy their cravings as they do not like being told what they can and can not have. In 2013, in response to the ban, The Daily Signal reported “Mayor Bloomberg and the Board of Health seek to use their power to change consumer behavior. This assumes that citizens are ignorant and must be protected from themselves.” This agrees with the above statement of the people not liking being told what they can and can not do, or have. Another thing people may argue is that the ban is for people to be able to be healthier and still have soda. CNN News reports that “One of those solutions is to control portion size and sugar consumption.” While this is true the ban would only be subjective to places such as movie theaters, sports venues, restaurants, and places that people visit every once in a blue moon. The Huffington Post reports, “It's also important to look at where people acquire such large drinks. … Such neighborhood stores selling over 50 percent food products fall under the jurisdiction of the City's Department of Health, and therefore would be limited by the ban. Those selling under 50 percent food products would be exempt from the ban.” This basically states that convenience stores, supermarkets, and gas stations would not be subjective to the ban so people could just go to one of these places to get larger sodas therefore finding a way around the ban. This subjectiveness of the ban would not only make the ban inefficient but would also cost the city by stores and other places that fall under the jurisdiction of the ban having to cut workers, which then causes the state to have to create more programs for poorer city

While Fletcher's argument holds merit, the study does acknowledge the weight loss contributing to a tax, even though they considered it a minuscule one (Fletcher, Frisvold & Tefft 2009). The fact is that sugary beverages are elastic goods that do

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

He earnestly states “ The soda producers and distributors, as well as the Teamsters members who deliver the product, argue that the tax is a job killer…” Bittman uses this strategy as a vessel to communicate his enthymeme that the soda producers and distributors only care about the profit they make as they “..may spend as much as 10 million dollars to make that case.” however, Bittman believes that the health of the impoverished is more important than the tax being referred to as a “job killer”. This strategy is effective towards his audience because they now have a clear understanding of what Bittman is arguing. He states “ The logic of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages has been clear for a decade…” here in this quote he explicitly states that the tax is a logical concept in which if it is applied then it will yield great results. Such as, decreasing the percent of children with a threat of diabetes and other

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

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,

Outline I. Introduction A. States around the nation are trying to put taxes on sodas. The main reason behind this tax is that it will reduce medical cost, obesity, diabetes, and the taxes will provide money for the states. B. Negative Externalities are the failures that happen because the producers do not take into account the costs that are impose on others. The producers do not pay for these costs and they produce more of that product because they avoid these costs. II.

This memo is an application of some of the policy ideas Cass Sunstein has described in his book “Simpler,” to a proposed “soda tax” in Oakland California. The introduction of the tax, contained in “Measure HH” (as it appears on the ballot) has been met with stiff opposition by some members of the Oakland area while others have embraced the idea. Three ideas from “Simpler” will be tested in this California case.

Economics may seem as a difficult topic to understand but some of it is just plain common sense that we have learned growing up, we just did not know the actual terms for it. Yet not many people understand it, not even politicians. In the articles, “Philadelphia’s Soda Tax Bust” and “America’s Lust for Bacon is Pushing Pork Belly Prices to Records”, they demonstrate two types of changes in the market. Then will be elucidated based on the factors of change in both supply and demand as well the results.

In “In Chicago, Nobody Knew the Soda Tax Could Be so Complicated” by Patrick Clinton, he points out that retailers in Cook County (Illinois) argue that the Sweetened Beverage Tax is illegal. The tax that was passed last fall and was planned to be effective by July 1, 2017, consisted of setting a tax rate per ounce on the retail sale of the drink brought so many controversies if they should keep the tax or not. Clinton explains that in the Illinois’s constitution any law has to be taxed uniformly, but the tax does not meet all the requirements. The Sweetened Beverage Tax includes any drinks with artificial sweeteners like drinks in a bottle or a mixed drink, even fountain drinks, but it excludes juices, drinks that are made by baristas, legitimate

The first question in Kass’s formulaic approach to the ethics of public health is “What are the public health goals of this program?” (Kass, 1777) By nature, the public health goal of any program is to essentially promote the overall health of a population through an organized and communal effort. In the case of the soda tax, the ultimate public health goal is simply to reduce the amount of morbidity & mortality and improve the well being of society. This begins by tackling the obesity problem, which is directly linked to morbidity & mortality. According to Brownell, “for each extra can or glass of sugared beverage consumed per day, the likelihood of a child’s becoming obese increases by 60%” (Brownell et al., 1599). It can be inferred that drinking soda is linked to obesity rates, but why should obesity rates matter? According to Sturm, “a higher BMI…is associated with increased mortality and increased risk for coronary heart disease, osteoarthritis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and certain types of cancer. Even modest weight reductions can have substantial lifetime health benefits” (Sturm, 245). Obviously if someone is morbidly obese, he or she is at extreme risk for a myriad of

“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