Soda Tax

As part of Governor Patterson's proposed budget to shore up New York's blinding deficit, Patterson and his team have gotten creative: an %18 sales tax on all soft drinks and other nondiet sugary beverages. Nicholas Kristoff is again coming correct with his Op-Ed in the Times today and makes some great points as to how the cigarette tax was the biggest healthcare breakthrough in the last 40 years. Maybe this soda tax could do similar things for obesity what the cigarette tax did for lung cancer.

Soda, even if it tastes good, is empty calories and really does nothing good for you. However, I also believe that the stuff in diet soda isn't much better for you. There have been studies that point to diet soda actually being more harmful to you than regular soda. It's hard to tell what's really going on here with conflicting studies floating about, but I think the bottom line for me is soda isn't good. Period. (Although it's hard to imagine never having a Dr. Brown's again.)

But here are some facts from Mr. Kristoff: "One new study estimates that 24 million Americans now have diabetes, more than four times the number in 1980. The total direct and indirect cost to Americans is $218 billion each year — an average of $1,900 per American household. Each year, diabetes contributes to the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans."

These are real numbers and I think that a tax on soda is a step in the right direction. When it boils down to it, soda is part of a bigger problem: the fact that the U.S. government subsidizes corn that then ends up as the corn syrup inside Coke. And, like I said yesterday, it sucks that our new Agricultural Secretary has such close ties to the interests of keeping the corn syrup flowing.