Obama open to ’sin tax’ on fattening beverages
Published: September 8, 2009
Updated 5 months ago
President Barack Obama hinted he could support a “sin tax” on fizzy drinks to help lower high rates of US obesity, but admitted it would be an uphill battle against corporate and economic interests.
“I actually think it’s an idea that we should be exploring,” Obama said in the forthcoming issue of Men’s Health, regarding potential taxes levied on soft drinks such as colas and other sugar-filled products.
“There’s no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda. And every study that’s been done about obesity shows that there is as high a correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity as just about anything else,” he said in excerpts released ahead of the magazine’s mid-September publication.
The president — reported to be one of the fittest US commanders-in-chief in decades — stressed that “obviously there is resistance on Capitol Hill to those kinds of sin taxes.
“Legislators from certain states that produce sugar or corn syrup are sensitive to anything that might reduce demand for those products,” he said.
In addition, “people’s attitude is that they don’t necessarily want Big Brother telling them what to eat or drink, and I understand that,” Obama added.
“It is true, though, that if you wanted to make a big impact on people’s health in this country, reducing things like soda consumption would be helpful.”
His comments come just six weeks after US health experts told a national conference on obesity in Washington that a significant portion of increased caloric intake in recent decades can be directly attributed to soft drinks and other sugared foods and drinks.
The president is currently embroiled in the most compelling domestic priority of his presidency, a reform of the US health care system.
Obama, who said he works out nearly every day in order to clear his head and reduce stress, described himself as “a healthy eater” with low blood pressure.
He keeps a bowl of apples in the Oval Office. “It was our first step toward health reform,” he said.
Two-thirds of American adults are obese or overweight and obesity-related illnesses cost the United States nearly 150 billion dollars a year, health officials were told at the July conference.
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Might the increased obeisity also be caused by the growth hormone laiden animal protein be it beef, chicken, etc consumed along with the sugary drink? No question that drinking excessively sweetened drinks contributes to obeisity but the real culprit may be the growth hormones. Increased obeisity seems to correlate to the introduction of those. A real big uphill battle there.
Might the obesity also be the result of aliens implanting desires in our brains to consume consume CONSUME fattening foods…
Provide some source material or continue to blindly speculate the cause. Up until 1900 people were eating healthy because there were no scientifically-designed food additives. With the explosion of ‘partially hydogenated soybean oil’ and ‘high fructose corn syrup’ and ‘yellow #5′ the majority of Americans’ waistlines expanded.
Stop hypothesizing, we already know what’s making people fat: high consumption, low/no exercise. Gimme a break. Tell your kid to turn off the x-box and get a baseball glove and a friend to actually GO OUTSIDE and PLAY instead of sitting on their ass wasting countless hours sucking down sodas you buy while mashing buttons to decide who’s the ’supreme Halo II’ champion.
What really baffles me is that 3 people thumbed your verbal dump up.
“Blame everybody but yourself,” that’s the American way.
People who are fat ARE fat because of themselves, with exceedingly few exceptions.
The real culprit is LAZY people not taking care of their bodies. End of story. I don’t need no stinking research to tell me sitting on your ass day after day stuffing your face with doritoes and sugar water will make you fat. It’s blindingly obvious.
Of course, fat gluttons is exactly the kind of population the US gov desires. How could these people put up any kind of revolution if they’re all ignorant couch potatoes more interested in britney’s latest psychotic episode than the number of supreme court rulings that Sarah Palin can’t think of in an interview with Katie Couric.
Let the dumbasses fill their guts with this toxic concoction. That’s just less paid out when they finally croak after making thousands of “donations” to their “loan shark” wealth-care pimps.
Our Monsanto Fooed™ is poison.
Let’s not have Aryan Nation standards for Americans.
Judge not obama you dont have the credentials..If god wanted us to be the same he would have made us the same..Did the same thing with smokers..I dont know many who wants to be like you..
Sugary drinks, TV, Internet, couches, chairs, food, beds, cars all contribute to obesity.
Consequently smoking is a an appetite suppressant.
Sin tax or syntax, he still has to prove his gender …
One condition: don’t call it a ’sin’ tax. Call it a ‘fat’ tax, like it is. Those of us who are godless heathens can’t sin, since sin is a biblical word.
It’s not that sodas contain wasted calories, I drank plenty of Pepsi growing up, but I also ran on my grade school track team for 4 years (5th-8th grade) and had such a great metabolism that, at a beerfest in college, a friend remarked ‘you have the perfect metabolism; you can drink beer after beer and never gain an ounce.’
And what happened to states’ rights? I think it’s wrong to take an issue that clearly no states have a problem with (since I haven’t heard of any states passing laws against sugary drinks) so why does the Federal government think they have any reason to impose a blanket tax across all 50 states that none of the states have a problem with?
OTOH maybe they can stop raising the taxes on tobacco. $6/pack is way too much; when I started smoking they were $2.10/pack. I’m already killing myself slowly, why you gotta make me broke too?
This is just for more revenue. If you ever lived in black neighborhoods where most food is bought in an asian deli you can understand this. Financial considerations already aren’t being taken into account. The majority of potato chip purchases I witnessed in my decade of living there attest to this. Most purchases are for multiple bags of 25 cent bags when you can save money by buying the same amount in a bigger bag. The 50 cent twenty ounce bottles of generic soda will go to what, 65-75 cents if its taxed zealously? That is not going to change behavior any more than liquor taxes and state run stores change behavior. They put this in under humanitarian pretenses but they really just want to tax whatever is convenient. If they could get enough knuckleheads together to support a tax on soy they would do the same, its just the current political environment they are creating.
Spot on captbebops, spot on. It is the growth hormones in meat and if you want to add more to it go after instead of the drinks, the people who make ingredients that go into the drinks and foods and stuff.
I know this must be some kind of a plot by ConAgra and big pharma to drive people to drink…..aspartame sweetened products! That stuff is poison, and they know it. Anyhow, I’ve never seen a thin person drinking a diet soda. They’re always fat.