America is notorious for being one of the fattest countries in the world. News reports are littered with articles and stories about the increased rate of obesity in adults and children. Some people blame the changes in typical Americans’ lifestyles, saying that people don’t have enough time to exercise or fix healthy meals with all the time spent at work. Others say that the combination of their lack of exercise and the introduction of video games have caused this. Whatever the cause, Americans are obese and lawmakers are trying to do something about the epidemic. A recent proposal from the New York City health commissioner Thomas Farley and Arkansas surgeon general Joseph W. Thompson is to add a one cent tax per ounce on soda. Does the government have the right to tell me what to eat or drink through taxes? I drink what most would consider a lot of soda, yet I manage to stay in shape and avoid obesity. Through an excise tax on soda, the government would be exercising a power that the constitution doesn’t provide and placing an unnecessary tax on Americans.
According to John Sicher, the one-cent tax that would be placed on soda would increase the current price by up to fifty percent (Neuman). With the economy in the weak state that it is, Americans don’t need another tax and a product most Americans drink almost every day. A bottle of Coke in a vending machine tends to be a dollar, but with the excise tax in place the price could increase to as much as $1.50. Not only that, but it’s estimated that the tax would raise up to $14.9 billion dollars in its first year (Neuman). The increase in price would cause a decrease in consumption and possibly weight loss. This would of course only happen if people slowed their consumption of soda due to the tax and not for health reasons.
Personal health and healthcare are two of the biggest issues in the news today. The universal health care proposal currently making its way through Congress would cost an estimated $1.5 trillion over the next decade (Alternative Press). While a lot of people misunderstand the bill as creating a “free” alternative of healthcare, it really isn’t. Some believe that the tax on soda would help to fund the healthcare bill that would cause an extensive financial burden on the country (Fox News). The money has to come from somewhere!
In addition to its possible ineffectiveness, the government doesn’t have any right to tell me what I can and cannot eat. In essence, the proposed tax on soda would be primarily funding another government program. What the government is actually doing is indirectly telling people what they should and shouldn’t eat or drink through a financial tax. It’s essentially a tax for being a fat person, or for having the eating behaviors of one. This would cause a huge increase in the size of the government and their interaction in people’s everyday lives.
The proposal of this tax has caused the creation of a website called “Americans Against Food Taxes,” whose members propose that, rather than taxing food to help prevent obesity, the government set restrictions to what can be sold in schools to children and extensively educate people on the importance of healthy eating. Their belief is that people won’t learn from a tax, and that education on the matter is the only way to prevent obesity.
This tax wouldn’t just impact the lives of everyday people, but also the earnings of major soda companies in America. Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca Cola, states that Coke wasn’t what made Americans fat but that lack of exercise has caused the country’s obesity epidemic. The fattest states in the country, West Virginia and Arkansas, already have the tax in place, and it isn’t doing much good for them. Not only that, but if the soda companies’ profits are adversely affected by the tax, which they would be more likely than not, some people are going to become unemployed in an industry that employs more than 220,000 people in the United States alone (Kent).
Look at how the video game industry is revamping games for physical human interaction, and I don’t mean just thumbs. The Nintendo Wii has been available for years now, and Nintendo has released games requiring you to move your arms around and perform different physical activities to complete tasks within the games themselves. Wii Fit has been a huge hit, an expansion to the system whose primary goal is to help users become physically fit - it’s in the name! Microsoft has even jumped on the physical movement games bandwagon with their intention to release Project Natal, a camera which attaches to your Xbox and recognizes your entire body without the use of a controller. Not only does the soda industry realize that it isn’t soda-causing people to gain weight, but also it’s the simple fact that they just don’t get up and move like they used to.
Excise taxes already in place are on products like alcohol, tobacco, and gasoline. Soda seems pretty tame compared to the other goods that excise taxes are placed on. Since alcohol poisoning can prove fatal, long-term use of tobacco products can cause all kinds of cancers, and gasoline has a negative effect on the environment, having a tax on these products makes sense. I’ve never heard of anyone binge drinking Mountain Dew and dying from sugar poisoning, or someone being diagnosed with cancer due to soda addiction. And it’s difficult to imagine a toxic cloud of Sierra Mist suffocating baby seals.
Nowhere in the Constitution does it give the government the right to tell people what they should and shouldn’t eat through the use of taxes. It’s ironic that the same country whose origins lie in a revolution from a repressive empire imposing similar taxes would employ such measures themselves. The likelihood of a civil war breaking out is unlikely, but taxes like this spawned a massive paradigm shift before. The soda tax is an unnecessary way for the government to somewhat regulate Americans’ diets. What is necessary is education, not a tax that keeps people from learning from their poor dietary choices. H.
