Should Sugar Be Regulated? >
Sugar Taxes Are Unfair and Unhealthy
High sugar taxes are at best unsuccessful, and at worst economically and socially harmful
March 30, 2012
About Patrick Basham:
Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. He co-authored Diet Nation: Exposing the Obesity Crusade.
If the regulatory discussion about sugar is going to be based on science, rather than science fiction, it needs to move beyond kicking the soda can.
Conventional wisdom says draconian regulation--specifically, a high tax--on sugary drinks and snacks reduces unhealthy consumption, and thereby improves public health. There are many reasons, however, why high sugar taxes are at best unsuccessful, and at worst economically and socially harmful.
Research finds that higher prices don't reduce soda consumption, for example. No scientific studies demonstrate a difference either in aggregate soda consumption or in child and adolescent Body Mass Index between the two thirds of states with soda taxes and those without such taxes.
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The study that did find taxes might lead to a moderate reduction in soda consumption also found this had no effect on adolescent obesity, as the reduction was completely offset by increases in consumption of other calorific drinks.
Economic research finds sugar taxes are a futile instrument in influencing the behavior and habits of the overweight and the obese. Why do sugar taxes fail? Those consumers who strongly prefer unhealthy foods continue to eat and drink according to their individual preferences until such time as it becomes prohibitively expensive to do so.
Demand for food is largely insensitive to price. A 10 percent increase in price reduces consumption by less than 1 percent. Applied to soda, this means that to reduce consumption by 10 percent, the tax rate on sugary drinks would need to be 100 percent!
A sugar tax also has undesirable social and economic consequences. This tax is economically regressive, as a disproportionate share of the tax is paid by low earners, who pay a higher proportion of their incomes in sales tax and also consume a disproportionate share of sugary snacks and drinks.
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Such taxes also have perverse, unintended consequences. Taxes on sugary snacks lead many consumers to replace the taxed food with equally unhealthy foods. Poorer consumers react to higher food prices not by changing their diets but by consuming even fewer healthy foods, such as fruits and vegetables, and eating more processed foods. For instance, taxes levied specifically on sugar content increase saturated fat consumption.
Sugar taxes have failed where they've been tried, and are unfair and unhealthy. Given that there's no compelling evidence they'll improve public health, we can't justify using the tax code to shape the sweetness of our dietary choices.
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- Other Arguments
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#28529
No — Waiting for sugar regulation will not solve the problem
KEITH T. AYOOB, Director of the Nutrition Clinic at the Rose F. Kennedy Children's Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
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#39140
No — Freedom for taxpayers and consumers is the answer, not more taxes and regulations
ART CARDEN, Assistant Professor of Economics at Rhodes College.
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#48280
Yes — Legislators should make policy that allows the price of food to match up more closely with its actual health costs
KRISTINA LEWIS, Doctor and Researcher at the Obesity Prevention Program at Harvard Medical School
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#53473
Yes — Food manufacturers should be required to group all sugars under one designation
MARION NESTLE, Co-author of 'Why Calories Count: From Science to Politics'
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#63980
Yes — Sugar needs to be regulated like other toxic and addictive substances
LAURA SCHMIDT, Professor of Health Policy at the University of California-San Francisco
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#73476
Yes — The time may have come for the FDA to gradually ratchet down the amount of sugar that pours into the food supply
MICHAEL JACOBSON, Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest
