Lung cancer? Tax cigarettes.
Heart disease? Tax TV companies.
Obesity? Tax Coca-cola?
Sadly, those small-minded public health students get jobs as small-minded politicians and public policy makers as evidenced by what happened in Philadelphia back on January 1.
It was then that Philly passed the Philadelphia Beverage Tax where all sodas as well as any "non-alcoholic beverage, syrup, or other concentrate used to prepare a beverage that lists as an ingredient any form of caloric sugar-based sweetener" are to be taxed at $0.015/oz. (1)
That sounds like a good way to decrease people's sugar intake, right? I mean if websites like kickthecan.info tell us the facts about how sugary beverages leads to health problems, shouldn't we target the source? Sugary beverages, right?
The consequences of such a short-sighted policy were never considered though. I've found this to be quite commonplace in the public health field. Nobody thinks about the businessman.
Supermarkets in Philly are now reporting a 30-50% decrease in beverage sales. (2)
But isn't that a good thing? We won! People aren't drinking as much soda!
Yeah, but that also affects the supermarket. Decreased sales = less employees. Any businessman can tell you that you can't take a drastic hit and keep your staffing the same and expect to survive.
And as a result, supermarkets, beverage distributors, and other marketplaces which sell sugary drinks are facing massive layoffs.
Jeff Brown's ShopRite is cutting 300 positions
Canada Dry Delaware Valley is cutting staffing by 20%. (3)
And a number of other beverage sellers are reporting similar staffing issues and impending layoffs.
Congratulations! You're skinny now! 'Cuz you have no food to eat!
This is policy abuse, government meddling, and shallow thinking at its worst.
Aside from the loss of jobs, think of the loss of taxes that that's going to mean for Philly. No more income taxes for those people. The things they normally would have bought with their paychecks that would generate sales tax aren't going to happen. The normal sales tax that would have been generated by soda sales is now gone as well as people don't want to buy soda in Philly at all anymore.
And how did the policy makers respond when they found out how terrible their plan was in reality? They fell back on calling it "fake news", saying that the numbers that grocers were relaying were fabricated. (1)
Ya'll. This is ridiculous.
What about this makes sense? If you really want to make an impact on people's health do something constructive.
Build more sidewalks. Build bike lanes. Build parks. Put mandatory P.E. back in schools. Put mandatory health classes back in schools. Create awesome tax incentives so that grocers open up in 'food deserts' in the inner city.
THAT is how you fight obesity. NOT by restricting peoples' freedoms.
