Currently browsing posts about: Taxes

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP)) and the American Heart Association (AHA) have issued a joint statement endorsing soda taxes along with other policies aimed at reducing risks for childhood obesity (the full statement is published in Pediatrics).

The AAP and AHA recommend:

• Local, state and national policymakers should consider raising the price of sugary drinks, such as via an excise tax, along with an accompanying educational campaign. Tax revenues should go in part toward reducing health and socioeconomic disparities.

• Federal and state governments should support efforts to decrease sugary drink marketing to children and teens.

• Healthy drinks such as water and milk should be the default beverages on children’s menus and in vending machines, and federal nutrition assistance programs should ensure access to healthy food and beverages and discourage consumption of sugary drinks.

• Children, adolescents, and their families should have ready access to credible nutrition information, including on nutrition labels, restaurant menus, and advertisements.

• Hospitals should serve as a model and establish policies to limit or discourage purchase of sugary drinks.

Comment:  This action of the AAP is truly remarkable.  In 2015, this Academy was heavily criticized for taking funding from Coca-Cola and, surely not coincidentally, saying little about the need for children to reduce consumption of sugary drinks.  Once exposed, the AAP said it could no longer accept that funding. I did, however, hear an alternative story.  Coca-Cola officials told me that as a result of their transparency initiative, the company would no longer fund the Pediatric, Dietetic, and Family Practice Academies.  It is also hardly a coincidence that now that the AAP no longer takes money from Coke, it is free to promote soda taxes as a useful public health strategy.

The AP reports that the reason the WHO committee on preventing noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) did not recommend soda taxes is that the US representative vetoed the idea.

The Trump administration has torpedoed a plan to recommend higher taxes on sugary drinks, forcing a World Health Organization panel to back off the U.N. agency’s previous call for such taxes as a way to fight obesity, diabetes and other life-threatening conditions.

The move disappointed many public health experts but was enthusiastically welcomed by the International Food and Beverage Alliance — a group that represents companies including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo. and Unilever.

The WHO committee’s report appeared in The Lancet last week.  About soda taxes, it said:

The Commissioners represented rich and diverse views and perspectives. There was broad agreement in most areas, but some views were conflicting and could not be resolved. As such, some recommendations, such as reducing sugar consumption through effective taxation on sugar-sweetened beverages and the accountability of the private sector, could not be reflected in this report, despite broad support from many Commissioners.

It did not include soda taxes in its tax recommendation:

Implement fiscal measures, including raising taxes on tobacco and alcohol, and consider evidence-based fiscal measures for other unhealthy products.

This omission is striking in view of WHO’s strong previous positions on the need to reduce NCDs as part of the agency’s Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, and on reducing sugars and taxing sodas as a means to achieve those goals:

• In 2015, WHO recommended  that sugars be consumed at less than 10% of calories.
• In 2016, WHO recommended taxes on sugary drinks as a way to reduce sugar intake and prevent NCDs.

Again a US veto?  Recall the infamous incident in 2003 when the US blocked the agency from recommending a reduction in sugar intake.

The US should not be holding WHO hostage to public health measures.

WHO should not be caving in to US threats.

NCDs are the major cause of worldwide death and disability and we need worldwide efforts to prevent them.  This calls for cooperation, not blackmail.

Shame.

Healthy Food America is relatively new on the food advocacy scene but I am always impressed by the useful resources it produces.

It is my go-to place for information about soda taxes and other ways to reduce sugars and sugary drinks.

It offers, for example:

• Soda tax maps
• Report with Ninjas for Health on Coca-Cola’s involvement with researchers and reporters
• Toolkit for advocates working to reduce sugars
• Research Watch summaries
• Daily news feed

Useful?  Yes!

Evaluation of the effect of the Berkeley soda tax continues.  The latest results, published in PLoS Medicine, say that one year after implementation of the tax,

Prices of Sugar-Sweetened Beverages (SSBs) increased in many, but not all, settings

• Sugary beverage sales declined by 9.6% in Berkeley stores
• Untaxed beverages sales increased by 3.5% driven by bottled water (up 15.6%)
• Average grocery bills did not increase
• Store revenue did not fall more compared to control cities
• Post-tax self-reported SSB intake did not change significantly compared to baseline

The evaluation was funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies with support from the University of North Carolina’s Population Center and its National grant from the NIH.

The University sent out its own press release.

It also did a short video explaining what the tax is about and its effects.

Michael Jacobson of CSPI says

For Berkeley, Calif., to reduce soda sales by 10 percent—and to raise water sales by 16 percent—is a huge public-health victory.  It shows that the soda tax enacted in Berkeley is working as intended.  And rather than costing the city, the soda tax represents a brand-new revenue stream, which Berkeley is using for important health programs.  We hope voters and policymakers elsewhere in the country will review the findings published in PLoS Medicine and press for soda taxes in their communities.

This study won’t stop Big Soda from claiming that taxes don’t work.  But if soda taxes didn’t make a significant dent in soda consumption, the industry wouldn’t be fighting taxes so hard.

Helena Bottemiller Evich at Politico reports on the response to this study from the American Beverage Association (ABA), which I cannot find online.  The ABA:

pointed out that the reduction in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages in Berkeley yielded a reduction of only 6.4 calories per person, per day. The study also revealed, the group added, that the tax’s first year produced an increase of about 31 calories per person, per day from untaxed beverages. The study’s authors noted the increase appeared to be largely attributable to increased intake of milk and “other” beverages, like yogurt smoothies and milkshakes.

The ABA also argued that Berkeley — a relatively small city with a high median income that wasn’t a soda-consumption hotbed to begin with — is “a challenging place to determine the true impact of a beverage tax, unlike Philadelphia, where the tax has led to significant job losses and economic hardship for working families.”

“This study does, however, confirm that sales of taxed beverages inside the city declined while sales of those same beverages outside the city increased, which is also what is happening in Philadelphia,” the ABA said.

“America’s beverage companies know we must play a role in improving public health, which is why we are taking aggressive actions to help people reduce the sugar and calories they get from beverages,” the group continued, noting the industry has pledged to cut calories from its products across the board — with a special focus on reducing calorie consumption in a few places that have extremely high rates of obesity, including communities in Los Angeles, the Mississippi Delta and rural Alabama.

The soda tax story continues.  It is not over yet.  Stay tuned.

Here are some reports:

• The Daily Mail
• Forbes

The latest is Connecticut.

• the bill says
• The Hartford Courant says
• The Connecticut Post says
• David Katz says

Here’s my list of taxes passed (!) and pending (?).  Have I missed any?  Please inform.

• Navajo Nation (!)
• Berkeley (!)
• Albany, CA (!)
• Oakland (!)
• San Francisco (!)
• Philadelphia (!!!) (sorry about forgetting it)
• Boulder (!)
• Chicago (!)
• Santa Fe (?)
• West Virginia (?)
• Seattle (?)
• Portland (?)

Healthy Food America has a handy map.

Addition: Bloomberg News has its own roundup

When I was in Berkeley a couple of weeks ago, I met Dechen Tsering who works with Health, Housing and Community Services for that city.  She keeps an eye on what’s happening with the revenues collected from the city’s soda tax.

She sent me a link to the soda tax Website.

It’s full of useful information about the tax and what is happening with it.

Since 2015, the Berkeley City Council has allocated a total of $5 million from the General Funds for community agency grants and Public Health Division staffing to support the Healthy Berkeley Program. The funded programs aim to reduce consumption of all sugar-sweetened beverages.

If you want to know which organizations are getting tax funds in 2017, take a look here.

And here’s more than you ever wanted to know:

1. Complete SSB Tax Ordinance.

2. Glossary of definitions.

3. FAQs about the SSB tax.

4. SSB tax revenue 10.20.2015

5. SSB tax revenue 2.9.2016

6. SSB tax revenue 5.2.2016

7. SSB tax revenue 3.29.2017

8. SSB tax forms and instructions

Impressive, no?  A bright ray of sunshine for the weekend.

A group of Canadian health organizations has issued a report on the health and economic impacts of sugary drink consumption, based on research they commissioned..

The research predicts dire effects if sugary drink consumption is not curtailed—more than $50 billion in health care costs over the next 25 years.

The report says that Canadians purchased an average of 444 ml of sugary drinks per day in 2015, well over the recommended sugar maximum of no more than 10% of total daily calories.

Sales of classic Coke and Pepsi are down, but look what is happening with other sugary beverages:

• Energy drinks              +638%
• Sweetened coffees      +579%
• Flavoured water         +527%
• Drinkable yogurt        +283%
• Sweetened teas            + 36%
• Flavoured milk            + 21%
• Sports drinks               +  4%

The report estimates that a 20 per cent excise levy on sugary drinks will do wonders for health, and will account for government revenue of $1.7 billion per year.   These revenues could support healthy living initiatives such as

• Subsidies for fruits and vegetables
• Healthy school lunch programs
• Public education
• Food literacy and skills education
• Physical activity initiatives
• Food security, safe drinking water, low-fat milk in Indigenous communities

Here are the documents

• Download the summary report
• Download the full report
• Download the call to action

If you are having trouble keeping up with articles about soda taxes, you are not the only one.  I’m trying to do this by dealing with one city at a time.  Here’s what’s come in recently about what’s happening in Philadelphia:

• The Mayor’s office has a summary of what the tax does.
• Fifteen health organizations have filed an amicus curiae brief in support of the tax and in opposition to the beverage industry’s lawsuit.  Here’s their press release.  And here’s the brief.
• Philadelphia Says Beverage Tax Has Created Over 250 Jobs For Pre-K Program
• Tom Frieden, former CDC director and former Commissioner of the New York City Health Department, says these taxes work
  ShopRite says the tax will result in layoffs
• Health Commissioner Thomas A. Farley says Philly’s beverage tax is working

Children are getting educated in prekindergarten. The city is taking the first steps toward a massive rebuilding of parks, recreation centers, and libraries. Nine community schools are helping students and their families. The city is meeting its revenue projections, and the soda industry says sugary drinks sales have declined…The soda industry claims that sales declines are forcing them to lay off hundreds of workers. This same industry spent $10 million and made plenty of misleading claims trying to kill the tax and is now funding a lawsuit against the city over it, so we should be skeptical of any unverifiable numbers they put out. It’s particularly tough to accept their claim that they have to lay off workers now, when they are still spending hundreds of thousands on advertising, lobbyists, and lawyers.

Addition

• Temple University blames increase in meal costs on soda tax