Soda Tax

A sugary drink tax or soda tax is a tax or surcharge designed to reduce consumption of drinks with added sugar. Drinks covered under a soda tax often include carbonated soft drinks, sports drinks and energy drinks. The tax is a matter of public debate in many countries and beverage producers like Coca-Cola often oppose it. Advocates such as national medical associations and the World Health Organization promote the tax as an example of Pigovian taxation, aimed to discourage unhealthy diets and offset the growing economic costs of obesity. Denmark began taxing soft drinks and juices in the 1930s. More recently, Finland reintroduced an earlier soft drink tax in 2011, while Hungary taxes sugary drinks as part of its 2011 public health product tax, which covers all food products with unhealthy levels of sugar. France introduced a targeted sugar tax on soft drinks in 2012. At a national level similar measures have also been announced in Mexico in 2013 and in the United Kingdom in 2016. In November 2014, Berkeley, California was the first city in the U.S. to pass a targeted tax on sugary drinks. Type II diabetes is a growing health concern in many developed and developing countries around the world, with 1.6 million deaths directly due to this disease in 2015 alone. Unlike sugar from food, the sugar from drinks enters the body so quickly that it can overload the pancreas and the liver, leading to diabetes and heart disease over time. A 2010 study said that consuming one to two sugary drinks a day increases your risk of developing diabetes by 26%. Heart disease is responsible for 31% of all global deaths and although one sugary drink has minimal effects on the heart, consuming sugary drinks daily are associated with long term consequences. A study found that men, for every added serving per day of sugar-sweetened beverages, each serving was associated with a 19% increased risk of developing heart disease. Another study also found increased risks for heart disease in women who drank sugary drinks daily. Obesity is also a global public and health policy concern, with the percentage of overweight and obese people in many developed and middle income countries rising rapidly. Consumption of added sugar in sugar-sweetened beverages has been positively correlated with high calorie intake, and through it, with excess weight and obesity. The addition of one sugar-sweetened beverage per day to the normal US diet can amount to 15 pounds of weight gain over the course of 1 year. Added sugar is a common feature of many processed and convenience foods such as breakfast cereals, chocolate, ice cream, cookies, yogurts and drinks produced by retailers. The ubiquity of sugar-sweetened beverages and their appeal to younger consumers has made their consumption a subject of particular concern by public health professionals. In both the United States and the United Kingdom, sugar sweetened drinks are the top calorie source in teenager's diets. A French study published in 2019 on the British Medical Journal also enlighted a possible link between the consumption of sugary drinks (beverages containing more than a 5% of sugar) and an higher or increased risk of developing cancer. Even if the researchers were unable to proof a clear causality between the two factors, they stated that their results can be taken as a confirm that 'reducing the amount of sugar in our diet is extremely important.' Dental caries, also known as tooth decay or dental cavities, is the most common noncommunicable disease worldwide. Sugary drink taxes have been discussed as a potential means to reduce the health and economic burden of dental caries.