Sales of sugary drinks fell dramatically across five U.S. cities, after they implemented taxes targeting those drinks – and those changes were sustained over time. That’s according to a study published Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum.
Researchers say the findings provide more evidence that these controversial taxes really do work. A claim the beverage industry disputes.
The cities studied were: Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco and Oakland, Calif., and Boulder, Colo. Taxes ranged from 1 to 2 cents per ounce. For a 2-liter bottle of soda, that comes out to between 67 cents to $1.30 extra in taxes.
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Kaplan and his colleagues found that, on average, prices for sugar-sweetened drinks went up by 33.1% and purchases went down by basically the same amount – 33%.
So, companies advertise to make more people buy something but then governments tax it to make less people buy it. Hmmm ok.
Also, human nutrition is highly controversial, should we really be basing health oriented taxes on moving/unstable science?
I’m sure any day now a big, peer reviewed study will come out that says Coke is good for you.
“Coke, it does a body good.”
Isn’t that the slogan or am I getting mixed up