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Taxes on sugary drinks cut consumer sales by 33%, study says

January 6, 2024 - from the CNN:

"Raising the price of sugar-sweetened sodas, coffees, teas and energy, sports and fruit drinks by an average of 31% reduced consumer purchases of those drinks by a third, according to a new analysis of restrictions implemented in five US cities.

"'For every 1% increase in price, we found a 1% decrease in purchases of these products,” Kaplan said. “The decrease in consumer purchases occurred almost immediately after the taxes were put in place and stayed that way over the next three years of the study'

"Many sugar-sweetened beverages are packed with calories, have little to no nutritional value and contribute to chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and stroke, studies have found. Even one serving daily of a sugary soft drink was associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease, according to a 2020 study.

"No or low-calorie diet drinks have also been linked to chronic disease, while both sugary and artificially sweetened beverages have been shown to increase the risk of dying early from several causes.

" The new study did not examine the health impact of reducing sales of sugary drinks, but an earlier one by Tufts University researchers did, Kaplan said.

"That study,published in 2019, found that a 15% to 20% reduction “in consumption of sugary beverages, if expanded nationally, would reduce the health care costs over the average American life span by $270 per person, or $45 billion in total,” Kaplan said.

"The analysis, published Friday in JAMA Health Forum, looked at per ounce tax plans by ZIP code in Boulder, Colorado; Oakland, California; Philadelphia; Seattle; and San Francisco.

" 'The last tax that we looked at was implemented in January 2018. And you might ask, "Well, why haven’t there been any more?" And that’s because states like California and Washington have passed bills to basically preempt cities from doing so,' Kaplan said.

"'If states are going to preempt these taxes from going into place at the city level, then we might consider ways for these taxes to be implemented at a larger geographic level, potentially even at a federal level.'"