Rates of obesity in the United States are alarming -- and efforts to reverse the trend seem ineffective. According the Center for Disease Control and Prevention 38 percent of U.S. adults are obese and 17 percent of teenagers are as well. Another third or so of Americans are overweight. Obesity can lead to serious health condition such as heart disease and diabetes. Some governments have attempted or considered paternalist interventions to stem the tide of obesity. For example, New York City attempted to ban the sale of soda pop in sizes greater than 16 oz. Other cities such as Berkeley and Philadelphia have passed a soda tax. In Philadelphia distributors are taxed 1.5 cents per once on soda pop and other sweetened drinks: a 2 liter bottle of pop that used to cost $1.79 sells today for $2.79 because of an added dollar in tax. These laws are intended to help consumers in these cities -- but have they gone too far? Are these laws and taxes justified? Why or why not?
Soda taxes and laws are a justified way to fight the rise in obesity in the United States due to the direct correlation between soda and obesity and the success of the soda tax in Berkeley, California. According to the National Institute of Health, there is “a positive association between greater intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages and weight gain and obesity in both children and adults.” sugar-sweetened beverages, or soda, and other processed junk food should be blamed for a lot of the obesity in the United States. One way lawmakers decided to tackle our obesity problem was by introducing soda taxes as a way to disincentivize drinking sugary sodas, which would hypothetically reduce the obesity rates. The first city to pass such a bill was Berekely, California. In March of 2015, 76% of Berkeley residents voted yes on Measure D, which would tax a soda buyer in Berkely one penny per ounce of soda. A study was conducted in 2018, three years after the tax was introduced, by Berkely Health to determine the results of the tax. They found that “consumption [of soda] in Berkeley had dropped by 21 percent a year after the soda tax was levied. Three years later, Berkeleyans were drinking half the amount of soda as they did before the tax (and consuming 29 percent more water).” Additionally, the soda tax in Berkely generates $1.5 million annually and is being used to fund nutrition education programs in schools, which could reduce obesity by teaching people how to stay healthy.
ReplyDeleteThese potential laws and taxes that would be imposed on customers have gone too far, and are not justified, attempting to appeal to soft paternalism, while not understanding the complexity of individuals physically or their economic situations. These acts appear to be hard paternalism, because health is something that pretty much anybody finds important no matter their definition of good. However, banning soda is not something so essential for your health that would make get almost all people benefit in the same way. For example, drug stores ban people from buying certain drugs without a doctor’s prescription, because if used wrongly it could have severe and negative effects on almost all people. However, what these taxes and bans don’t recognize is how soda, and sugar in general, affects people in many different ways, across a spectrum of severity. In reality, not everyone is the same anatomically, and soda affects people differently, if someone is very fit and has a soda, it would have little to no effect on their life, and if they maintain their fitness, they can even continue to drink sodas. What the legislators are worried about are people who are unfit and not maintaining their fitness causing harm to themselves from extended soda consumption. In order to treat regulate the soda of just this unhealthy group, the bans would have to target them, and that would be unequitable. These laws are really soft paternalism, turning the demonization of sugar by the general media to be used for paternalist laws. Dworkin argues against soft paternalism, that people should understand what their own values are enough to make decisions surrounding them. Additionally, soda bans and taxes don’t recognize the economic disparities it might affect. Soda bans are not stopping the ones affected the most, the unhealthy or addicted to the substances, because the people can just buy more. Soda taxes are classist, because they essentially allow only the rich to continue to purchase soda, and is specifically targeting a group of people against soda consumption.
ReplyDeleteLaws designed to discourage obesity-causing behaviors within a community are justified insofar as they have popular support. As Mill notes in On Liberty, one of the primary reasons hard paternalistic laws are not generally justified is that they presume to know the best course of action for any individual to achieve their desired ends, regardless of what an individual’s actual desired ends may be. However, in the case of soft paternalism, a law does not force values on citizens, but rather aids them in achieving their declared ends. In the case of soda taxes, so long as people generally agree that they wish to not drink as much soda, but do not have enough impulse control to in any given moment make that choice, a government is justified in implementing such a tax. However, if the citizens affected by the law do not agree that they wish to drink less soda, and the government assumes that all people ought to strive to be healthy in contrast with this declaration, the such a tax would not be justified. Assuming these laws are being passed within a democracy with fair and equal representation where everyone is free to voice their desires, it seems unlikely that such a law would be passed without the requisite support. Even if it were, so long as there are regular elections, it seems unlikely is would not get overturned if there were public outrage. Therefore, there will seldom be a case where a soda tax in a democracy is not just.
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