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Soda taxes Follow
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Agree:
Mike Bloomberg American businessman and politician, former mayor of new york city
Noncommunicable diseases are a growing global crisis, especially in low-and-middle income countries. There’s substantial evidence that taxes and fiscal policies are essential to confronting this health threat.
Philip Hammond U.K. Treasury chief
Producers are already reformulating sugar out of their drinks [even before the sugar tax comes into effect]
Rachel Cooke British journalist
Some anti-obesity campaigners are busy arguing that the new sugar tax, which applies to any soft drink containing more than 5g of sugar per 100ml, should now be extended to, among other items, the huge caramel lattes sold by high street coffee shops. It isn’t, of course, very hard to see why, even before you learn that some of these vat-sized drinks contain up to 25 teaspoons of sugar (there are a... See More
David Haslam Chairman of the National Obesity Forum
Currently NOF [National Obesity Forum] are calling for a sugar tax on sugar sweetened beverages [SSBs], but a call for a tax for sugary foods is just around the corner.
Jamie Oliver British celebrity chef and restaurateur
We should be big and bold. Who is running the country? The businesses who are profiting from ill health or is it us
World Health Organization The United Nations' health agency
There is reasonable and increasing evidence that appropriately designed taxes on sugarsweetened beverages would result in proportional reductions in consumption, especially if aimed at raising the retail price by 20% or more
Government of the United Kingdom UK Government
This is independent confirmation that the soft drinks industry levy, a key part of our world-leading Childhood Obesity Plan, will be a potent tool in the fight against childhood obesity. Not only that, it will help save our children's teeth and cut rates of type 2 diabetes. Sugar-laden soft drinks are a recognised driver of childhood obesity and through our broader sugar reduction programme we're ... See More
Oxford University Official Twitter account for the University of Oxford, one of the world's leading universities
The planned [UK] sugar tax could slash obesity among young children by 10 per cent and create health by stealth
George Osborne British politician
I am not prepared to look back at my time here in this Parliament, doing this job and say to my children's generation 'I'm sorry. We knew there was a problem with sugary drinks. We knew it caused disease. But we ducked the difficult decisions and we did nothing'.
Lawrence H. Summers Harvard economist and former US Treasury secretary
We have strong evidence from around the world that raising taxes on products like tobacco, sugar sweetened beverages and alcohol is highly effective at reducing harmful consumption and saving lives. I think this is about as close to free-lunch, win-win policy as economists have found
Sarah Wollaston British general practitioner and politician
The childhood obesity strategy needs to tackle the problem from every angle, but to leave out a sugary drinks tax would miss an important opportunity to tackle the single biggest contributor of the sugar in teenagers’ diets. There is compelling evidence it would work and do so quickly.
Anna Lappé Author, educator, sustainable food advocate
Today, the public health community understands that consuming sugar — particularly in liquid form — increases risks of serious health conditions, such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, not to mention tooth decay. A 2010 study found that consuming just one to two sugary drinks a day increases your risk of developing diabetes by 26 percent. While sugar is every... See More
Institute for Fiscal Studies British financial research institute/think tank
Our results show that young consumers would lower their sugar consumption by more than older individuals in response to a soda tax. The tax, therefore, succeeds in achieving relatively large reductions in sugar among one group.
Rosa DeLauro American politician
There is a clear relationship between sugar-sweetened beverages and a host of health conditions, including diabetes, heart disease, obesity and tooth decay. We are at a crucial tipping point. The SWEET Act would help correct the path we are currently on.
Robert Jenrick British lawyer
In the time between announcing this policy and it taking effect, more than half of all soft drinks have been reformulated to lower sugar content.
Jane Ellison British politician
The soft drinks industry levy is an important step forward in the fight to halt our obesity crisis and create a Britain fit for the future. Obesity is a threat both to the health of children and to our economy, costing the NHS billions of pounds every year.
Steve Brine British politician
Our teenagers consume nearly a bathtub of sugary drinks each year on average, fuelling a worrying obesity trend. The levy is a ground-breaking policy that will help to reduce sugar intake.Disagree:
Mark Mustio Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives
We’re seeing that those places where families buy their food and groceries are starting to lose money, and we don’t want them to close.
Jacob Rees-Mogg British politician
The tax system is not there to tell us how to live our lives.
Paul Polman CEO, Unilever
In essence, there is nothing wrong with [sugar], it depends on how your diet is. In some products it makes more sense, in others not. I personally am very mindful of my sugar intake. But I don’t need a tax for that, nor do poor people need a tax for that. Poor people need to be helped not being poor, that’s probably a bigger thing than anything else.
Adam Smith Institute ASI is UK’s leading neoliberal think tank. See: @EamonnButler @Sam_Dumitriu @philip_salter @Da
The sugar tax means smaller bottles, higher prices and worse tasting recipes. What did you expect would happen?!
Tax Foundation Sound Tax Policy since 1937. Subscribe to updates here: https://t.co/8A1bVcQF8a
Our research has generally concluded that soda taxes are narrow, punitive taxes that are a budget risk not likely to solve America’s health issues. They’re a misguided attempt at solving a multifaceted health problem and will introduce many unintended fiscal consequences.
Institute of Economic Affairs The Institute of Economic Affairs is the UK's original free-market think-tank, founded in 1955
Early evidence casts serious doubt on whether sugary drink taxes have ‘progressive’ health benefits either. Low-income consumers do not seem to have particularly elastic demand for sugary drinks. Even if they enjoyed disproportionate health gains from sin taxes, they would still suffer a net loss to their welfare and the tax would remain regressive in the traditional sense.
Christopher Snowdon 'The IEA's abrasive director of lifestyle economics' (Private Eye). Spectator Health. Tweeting
[People are] quite unresponsive to price hikes and do not significantly change their habits.
Sam Bowman I'm a liberal. I'm interested in economics, technology and food. I used to run @ASI and I inve
A tax on sugary soft drinks is the first step on the road to fat taxes and sugar taxes more generally. It makes little sense to tax sugary drinks on their own, rather than sugar more generally – a couple of Mars bars are just as bad as a bottle of Coke – but the Chancellor probably reckons that the public won’t care if he only targets soft drinks. Once the tax is in place, he will follow the lead ... See More
Mark Littlewood Director General of the Institute for Economic Affairs
A tax on fizzy drinks seems more likely to provoke a public backlash than many other taxes on unhealthy products. Smokers and drinkers have been become inured to high levies on their lifestyle choices. By contrast, a large bottle of pop is a standard part of an average family’s shopping and, if consumed sensibly, has no measurable health impacts. Allowing your kids a glass of cola with their lunch... See More
Food and Drink Federation We're Food and Drink Federation (FDF), the voice of the UK food and drink industry. See @TimRy
FDF opposes the soft drinks industry levy as we believe it is wrong in principle to single out individual nutrients or product categories for punitive treatment.
Will Quince MP Conservative MP for Colchester
[The UK sugar tax] will hit Consumers: The tax is designed to be levied on soft drinks companies, based on the volume of sugar-sweetened drinks they import of export. But the independent economic forecaster, the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, states the costs of the levy will be ‘passed entirely onto the price paid by consumers’. That means it will be the public, not soft drinks companies tha... See More
Competitive Enterprise Institute Non-profit libertarian think tank
Soda Taxes: a Failed Experiment that Needs to End. Sin taxes are a blunt instrument that have unpredictable effects on consumer behavior, as well as unintended consequences. The poorest in our communities often bear the financial brunt of these regressive taxes, which are ineffective at combating obesity. 4 Despite the best intentions of public health advocates pushing for a soda tax, the real-wor... See More
