I'd also challenge anyone to demonstrate taxing a commodity, at any level, has resulted in a significant decline in its use. So even if that is the rationale driving this kind of effort, it's not based in reality.
I'll take you up on that challenge.
Tobacco Use: Increasing Price to Decrease Demand
Background
Tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States (12). In addition to causing more than 440,000 deaths annually, tobacco results in over $175 billion in health-related economic losses (11). Numerous measures have been employed to successfully reduce demand for tobacco products, reduce smoking prevalence, limit youth initiation, and increase cessation rates. Such measures include increasing prices by imposing higher cigarette taxes, restrictions on public smoking, providing anti-tobacco advertising, and mandating warning labels (19).
However, of all intervention methods, price has been shown to be the single most effective means of altering tobacco use behavior (19).
I see alcohol and tobacco as more of "luxury" items. They are drugs. While a lot of soda has caffeine, so does coffee. Should coffee be taxed? No, since it doesn't have sugar? So then we'll tax fruit juice, which has lots of sugar! No, since it doesn't have caffeine?
Round and round....
You're actually onto something here MissU. IMHO, it really isn't soda per se, but rather sugars in general that I think are the real culprit. OTOH, there is some evidence that drinking sugary beverages is worse than eating sugars in foods for a variety of reasons.
Therefore, I'd see this tax as merely a stopgap along the way to doing what really needs to be done to curb the problem, i.e. eliminating sugar and corn subsidies that artificially cheapen sugars and make them a cheap and thus attractive option to add to processed foods to make them taste like, well,
food. The later is an option that I don't think any of us conservatives would argue against as it amounts to little more than corporate welfare. And you know how we conservatives hate welfare.
Please feel free to read any or all of the following for more background on what I've said above:
Effects of Soft Drink Consumption on Nutrition and Health: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis (...meaning they reviewed the data from many different studies)
Fructose, weight gain, and the insulin resistance syndrome
Soft Drink Consumption and Risk of Developing Cardiometabolic Risk Factors and the Metabolic Syndrome in Middle-Aged Adults in the Community
You're 'for' the government legislating behavior by imposing financial penalties? Seriously?
If you don't want to drink soda brother, don't drink it. Do we really need big brother slobbering at the trough in yet another way, sucking a few more dollars every payday from the average american?
I don't think so. That regular folks see this kind of federal intrusion as 'good' just blows me away. The federal government doesn't give a damn about your teeth or sugar intake. They just want your money dude.
While it feels good to say all the usual things about personal responsibility, it doesn't hold much weight here. How so? Well, the insurance industry has priced premiums for coverage based on risk for years. In this case, one can think of the tax as a "premium" for consuming sugar. Besides, I'm of the mind that your freedom to do self destructive things should generally end at the point where it ends up costing
me money. In this case the obesity epidemic has gotten to the point where it's costing those of us who make a decent effort to not eat ourselves into oblivion more than our fair share.
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