The New York Times, ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS, April 4, 2010
New York State’s health commissioner would be the first to admit he has soft drinks on the brain.
The commissioner, Dr. Richard F. Daines, was recently driving down Interstate 15 in Utah, his home state, when he came across four billboards in a row that beamed a subliminal message at him, and not the one the advertisers intended.
The first billboard said, “44 Ounce Soda, 99 Cents.” (“This is a carbonated beverage, meant to be consumed in your car,” he said, marveling at the thought of such a large serving.)
The next one said, “Any Size Soda, One Dollar.” (“Who would go in and order the petite size?” he said. “It’s just a signal to consume.”)
The third billboard trumpeted Utah’s first dedicated C-section wing with a slogan that might owe an apology to Garrison Keillor: “Where No C Is Average.” (“Presumably,” Dr. Daines said, “maternal obesity and diabetes are one of the reasons women are getting C-sections.”)
The fourth billboard said, “We Suck Fat. Smart Liposuction.”
“It kind of captures the whole thing,” Dr. Daines said, getting excited as he told the story in an interview in his Manhattan office. “We underprice this commodity that we overconsume — and I mean we, we all do it — we suffer the consequences, and then we try to buy our way back out of it, liposuction or something, bariatric surgery, some kind of pill for obesity.”
Which brings him to Gov. David A. Paterson’s proposed penny-an-ounce tax on sugared sodas.
Dr. Daines fits the part of the sin-tax crusader. Standing 6-foot-1, he is as lanky and folksy-sounding as Jimmy Stewart, a Spanish-speaking former Mormon missionary in Bolivia who practiced medicine in the South Bronx for 20 years.
Over the past few weeks, he has been traveling the state lobbying anyone who would listen about the scourge of obesity and championing the proposed excise tax as a possible cure that has the added benefit of plugging a giant hole in the state budget.
The state budget office estimates such a tax would raise $1 billion a year when fully in effect, and reduce consumption by 15 percent, an estimate based, Dr. Daines says, on industry price elasticity models. Earnings would go to stave off health services cuts, so the tax is supported by the health care workers’ union — 1199 S.E.I.U. — and the Greater New York Hospital Association.
Many have written off the soda tax as a lost cause, with neither the Senate nor the Assembly supporting it. Soda bottlers and many supermarkets and bodegas have mobilized to oppose the tax, saying it would cost jobs. Dr. Daines accuses politicians of caving to the soft-drink lobby, which makes regular campaign contributions.
“It scares the politicians away,” he said.
But he is gambling that the tax proposal might be revived during 11th-hour budget negotiations, when lawmakers are desperate.
Dr. Daines, meanwhile, has gone into polemical overdrive.
He dismisses as counterintuitive arguments by the soft-drink industry that the link between soda consumption and obesity has not been proved. “It’s obviously scientifically plausible that if you reduce consumption of excess calories, you reduce obesity,” he said.
He ridiculed what he called the “personal choice” argument that government should stay out of people’s kitchens, saying it was being promulgated by “AstroTurf false-flag operations” that are really supported by the soda industry.
“We know this elaborately with tobacco,” he said.
His passionate attacks on soda-tax opponents make one almost want to pity Nelson Eusebio, a supermarket owner in Queens who is chairman of New Yorkers Against Unfair Taxes, a coalition that is fighting the tax. Mr. Eusebio called Dr. Daines “out of touch with reality.”
“When it comes to obesity, to attack a single industry as wholeheartedly as he has is creating a lot of confusion for the public,” Mr. Eusebio said. “It’s leading the public to think that if they stop drinking soda, they won’t be obese anymore. Soda may be a contributor to obesity, but it’s not the sole contributor.”
Dr. Daines hates the term “fat tax,” often used by supporters and opponents alike, because it sounds accusatory. He prefers the more anodyne “beverage tax.”
But diplomacy has not necessarily been his strong suit. After Staten Island lawmakers supported an antitax rally at the Coca-Cola sales and distribution center near the Goethals Bridge, Dr. Daines fired off a scolding press release that said, “Staten Island has the state’s second-highest obesity rate, as well as the second-highest consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.”
“I am concerned for the health of Staten Islanders,” he added. “Sixty-five percent of Staten Island residents are overweight or obese, and 35 percent of them drink one or more cans of sugar-sweetened beverages like soda every day.”
Dr. Daines urged Staten Islanders to support their local soft-drink workers by drinking Diet Coke (which would not be taxed), adding, “I hope they also drink nutritious low-fat milk.”
Waxing passionate the other day, he managed to make soda purveyors sound almost like drug dealers.
“I raised my kids on Park Avenue,” he said. “You can walk at least from 60th Street to 96th Street on Park Avenue. You won’t see a single soda billboard, you won’t see a single fast-food outlet, and I don’t think you could buy a soda. Basically, a child raised in that corridor has a soda-free day after school.”
But walk 30 blocks north to Harlem, he said, and the picture is different. “This is cheap, it’s heavily advertised, it tastes really good,” he said. “And then we plunge kids into that environment, and we say, if you have a problem, you lack self-control.”
Mr. Eusebio, the tax opponent, recommended that Dr. Daines devote his time to promoting a “holistic diet” and educating young people about the benefits of exercise.
“Educating people helps them more than taxing them,” Mr. Eusebio said. “If taxation was a form of diet, New Yorkers would be the healthiest people on the planet because we are the most overtaxed people on the planet.”
New York Health Official Champions the Soda Tax – NYTimes.com.
]]>More U.S. health experts called for taxing sweetened soft drinks on Wedn
esday, saying such taxes could fight obesity and be used to fund public health efforts.
New York City health commissioner Dr. Thomas Farley, nutritionist Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, Kelly Brownell, an obesity expert at Yale University in Connecticut and others said the current taxes do not go far enough.
“We propose an excise tax of one percent per ounce for any beverages that have any added caloric sweetener,” they wrote in their proposal, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Much as taxes on tobacco products are routine at both state and federal levels because they generate revenue and they confer a public health benefit with respect to smoking rates, we believe that taxes on beverages that help drive the obesity epidemic should and will become routine.”
They said studies have shown taxes could cut consumption just enough — by about 1 gram of sugar per ounce.
“A tax of one cent per ounce of beverage would increase the cost of a 20-ounce soft drink by 15 to 20 percent.” They estimate that would lead to a 10 percent drop in consumption, or enough to affect weight.
* Cent tax per ounce could cut consumption by 10 percent
* Cutting caloric intake could lower obesity levels
* Industry groups say soda taxes don’t work
“A consumer who drinks a conventional soft drink (20 ounces or 591 millilitres) every day and switches to a beverage below this threshold would consume approximately 174 fewer calories each day,” they wrote.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated in December that a tax of three cents on every 12-ounce (355-millilitre) can of soda could raise $50 billion over 10 years.
Brownell called for such a tax in April along with Farley’s predecessor, Dr. Thomas Frieden, who became director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in June.
“Currently, 33 states have sales taxes on soft drinks (mean tax rate 5.2 percent), but the taxes are too small to affect consumption and the revenues are not earmarked for programs related to health,” Brownell, Farley and the others wrote.
OBESITY SURGING
They noted that people are drinking more sweet drinks and the obesity rate is surging. “In Mexico, intake of sugar-sweetened drinks doubled between 1999 and 2006 in all age groups,” they wrote.
“Reducing caloric intake by 1 percent to 2 percent per year would have a marked impact on health in all age groups.”
via Tax soft drinks to fight obesity, U.S. experts say | Deals | Regulatory News | Reuters .
]]>AFP September 8, 2009
President Barack Obama hinted he could support a “sin tax” on fizzy drinks to help lower high rates of US obesity, but admitted it would be an uphill battle against corporate and economic interests.
“I actually think it’s an idea that we should be exploring,” Obama said in the forthcoming issue of Men’s Health, regarding potential taxes levied on soft drinks such as colas and other sugar-filled products.
“There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that’s been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else,” he said in excerpts released ahead of the magazine’s mid-September publication.
The president — reported to be one of the fittest US commanders-in-chief in decades — stressed that “obviously there is resistance on Capitol Hill to those kinds of sin taxes.
“Legislators from certain states that produce sugar or corn syrup are sensitive to anything that might reduce demand for those products,” he said.
In addition, “people’s attitude is that they don’t necessarily want Big Brother telling them what to eat or drink, and I understand that,” Obama added.
“It is true, though, that if you wanted to make a big impact on people?s health in this country, reducing things like soda consumption would be helpful.”
His comments come just six weeks after US health experts told a national conference on obesity in Washington that a significant portion of increased caloric intake in recent decades can be directly attributed to soft drinks and other sugared foods and drinks.
The president is currently embroiled in the most compelling domestic priority of his presidency, a reform of the US health care system.
Obama, who said he works out nearly every day in order to clear his head and reduce stress, described himself as “a healthy eater” with low blood pressure.
He keeps a bowl of apples in the Oval Office. “It was our first step toward health reform,” he said.
Two-thirds of American adults are obese or overweight and obesity-related illnesses cost the United States nearly 150 billion dollars a year, health officials were told at the July conference.
AFP: Obama open to ‘sin tax’ on fizzy drinks to stem obesity.
]]>Discussion in The Washington Post on whether soda tax is fair.
As I reported in April, Yale professor Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, and Thomas Frieden, health commissioner for the city of New York, have renewed their push for a soda tax as a means of curbing obesity.
In this week’s “Eat, Drink and Be Healthy” column, Brownell reiterates his belief that a soda tax would dramatically reduce soda consumption. He’s among the many experts who are convinced that over-consumption of sugared beverages, including sodas, sports drinks and fruit juices containing sugar or high fructose corn syrup, is one of the leading causes of overweight and obesity in America. Brownell suggests that revenue generated by the tax be used to support subsidies for farmers growing healthful foods, making good-for-you meals more accessible.
If that sounds reasonable to you, take a moment to hear what Adam Drewnowski has to say. Drewnowski, director of the Center for Public Health Nutrition at the University of Washington, believes taxing soda fails to target obesity’s true causes — and is unfair to boot.
Drewnowski notes that soda consumption patterns in the general population correlate not just with obesity but with poverty, and that in focusing on the soda-obesity connection we fail to address other conditions associated with poverty, from sedentary lifestyles and television viewing to unemployment and “general hopelessness,” that contribute to weight gain.
“We should be looking at those things,” Drewnowski says. “That’s my complaint — why aren’t we?” Addressing these issues would attack obesity at its core, he believes.
Drewnowski calls “callous” the contention by soda-tax proponents that soda consumption is “not necessary for life.”
“Neither is a Park Avenue apartment,” he scoffs.
A soda tax would disproportionately affect those who can least afford it, Drewnowski says. It’s also punitive and threatens to make less accessible one of the few small pleasures many poor people can enjoy.
Drewnowski fears that current public-health messages about healthful foods promote expensive foods that seem out of reach to people with little money. “In reality, many people’s food choices are extremely limited,” Drewnowski says. “To a large extent, they eat what they can afford…The less money you have, the less inclined you are to want to spend it on wholesome food,” says Drewnowski, who’s been working to raise awareness of foods that are at once nutrient-rich and inexpensive. He favors helping people understand that humble, and relatively inexpensive, foods such as potatoes, beans, eggs and milk can form the basis of a satisfying and nutritious diet.
But in the end, Drewnowski suggests, we shouldn’t be dictating what low-income people eat or don’t eat. “There’s an overt classism,” he says, in regarding the “undeserving poor. They shouldn’t have so much fun. They’re lazy. They should eat lentils instead of French fries.”
]]>The taxes would pay for only a fraction of the cost to expand health-insurance coverage to all Americans and would face strong opposition from the beverage industry. They also could spark a backlash from consumers who would have to pay several cents more for a soft drink.
On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee is set to hear proposals from about a dozen experts about how to pay for the comprehensive health-care overhaul that President Barack Obama wants to enact this year. Early estimates put the cost of the plan at around $1.2 trillion. The administration has so far only earmarked funds for about half of that amount.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based watchdog group that pressures food companies to make healthier products, plans to propose a federal excise tax on soda, certain fruit drinks, energy drinks, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas. It would not include most diet beverages. Excise taxes are levied on goods and manufacturers typically pass them on to consumers.
Senior staff members for some Democratic senators at the center of the effort to craft health-care legislation are weighing the idea behind closed doors, Senate aides said.
The Congressional Budget Office, which is providing lawmakers with cost estimates for each potential change in the health overhaul, included the option in a broad report on health-system financing in December. The office estimated that adding a tax of three cents per 12-ounce serving to these types of sweetened drinks would generate $24 billion over the next four years. So far, lawmakers have not indicated how big a tax they are considering.
Proponents of the tax cite research showing that consuming sugar-sweetened drinks can lead to obesity, diabetes and other ailments. They say the tax would lower consumption, reduce health problems and save medical costs. At least a dozen states already have some type of taxes on sugary beverages, said Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“Soda is clearly one of the most harmful products in the food supply, and it’s something government should discourage the consumption of,” Mr. Jacobson said.
The main beverage lobby that represents Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc., Kraft Foods Inc. and other companies said such a tax would unfairly hit lower-income Americans and wouldn’t deter consumption.
“Taxes are not going to teach our children how to have a healthy lifestyle,” said Susan Neely, president of the American Beverage Association. Instead, the association says it’s backing programs that limit sugary beverage consumption in schools.
Some recent state proposals along the same lines have met stiff opposition. New York Gov. David Paterson recently agreed to drop a proposal for an 18% tax on sugary drinks after facing an outcry from the beverage industry and New Yorkers.
The beverage-tax proposal would apply to drinks that many Americans don’t consider unhealthy — such as PepsiCo’s Gatorade and Kraft’s Capri Sun — based on their calorie content.
Health advocates are floating other so-called sin tax proposals and food regulations as part of the government’s health-care overhaul. Mr. Jacobson also plans to propose Tuesday that the government sharply raise taxes on alcohol, move to largely eliminate artificial trans fat from food and move to reduce the sodium content in packaged and restaurant food.
The beverage tax is just one of hundreds of ideas that lawmakers are weighing to finance the health-care plans. They’re expected to narrow the list in coming weeks.
The White House, meanwhile, is pulling together private health groups to identify cost savings that will help fund the health overhaul. Mr. Obama on Monday held a White House meeting with groups that represent doctors, hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and medical-device makers. They pledged to help restrain cost increases in the health-care system in an effort to save $2 trillion over the next decade.
“When it comes to health-care spending, we are on an unsustainable course that threatens the financial stability of families, businesses and government itself,” Mr. Obama told reporters.
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