Headline: Governor Paterson proposes ‘Obesity Tax,’ a tax on non-diet sodas.
Call me crazy, but I do not think that charging a tax on non-diet soda is going to solve the obesity crisis.
Nor will it solve our economy. This tax is also not fair. Plenty of healthy people consume a few regular sodas once in a while. If you want to add an all-soda tax, while still being silly, at least it is fair. The non-diet soda tax discriminates against those who do not like or cannot consume artificial sweeteners. Surveys show that 1 in 10,000 individuals have a condition known as phenylketonuria, and cannot metabolize the phenylalanine found in some diet sodas.
I am not a big soda fan myself. I know that many recent studies have shown that the artificial sweeteners in diet soda can cause sugar cravings, headaches, digestion disruption and bloating. Not to mention the fact that while FDA approved, diet soda is essentially a sugar-chemical containing beverage. And the less chemicals we put into our bodies, the better.
My advice to the government? I am less in favor of taxing unhealthy-minded people and more in favor of giving positive recognition to healthy individuals. I don’t know how, but if the government is really concerned about the public’s well being, they might look into a little positive feedback to go along with their new tax ideas. Taxing soda is a quick fix, that I do not believe really fixes anything in the long term.
Read the complete story in the NY Daily News:
Governor Paterson proposes ‘Obesity Tax,’ a tax on non-diet sodas
12/16/08 10:11 AM
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Ironic that patterson is so up in arms with snl disability skit but would put a tax on those 10000 thousand disabled!
In a twisted kind of way, I agree on the soda tax, but instead of taxing soda cans, I think that lawmakers should elaborate a little more on a tax law that would lay taxes on the makers of the products, example: if the product goes over certain percentage of unhealthy ingredient per volume such as sugar, fat or sodium they should be taxed, that way we force product makers to limit the amount of healthy ingredients they put into a product if they dont want to pay extra taxes for them. We should put all the resposibility on the product maker and not the consumers.
Janet
No, I don’t agree with the tax on soda, when it’s dairy that’s making our kids fat.