Effort to tax sugary drinks fails but intention is good

As you might have noticed, we are all getting "a little fluffy."

Or as our vet used to say about the family pooches: "They’re not fat, they just have loose muscles."

America’s diet has gone past the joking stage; we are getting fat. Obese is the term, and we are getting there.

In the past 15 years, Hawaii’s obesity rate has doubled. Twenty-three percent of all Hawaii adults are obese, according to Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

While Hawaii ranks as the fifth least-obese state, there is renewed interest in taxing you skinny.

From New York and California to Hawaii, there is debate on taxing sugary soda and other drinks, because soda is an easily identifiable, calorie-laden and an unneeded addition to your diet.

Last year, Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie proposed a sugar tax. It was shot down, and this year, he came back urging a commission or a study.

The argument is that fat people get sick more: they get diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and the state winds up paying for their treatment and care. Why not prevent it by discouraging the extra pounds in the first place?

State Sen. Josh Green, the Hawaii island Democrat and emergency room physician, is the chief sponsor of bills to tax soda.

"I am not sure the political will is there yet, but it is coming," Green says.

Studies by Archive of Internal Medicine indicate that a 10 percent tax on soda would result in a 7 percent drop in soda consumption.

If internists can do economic projections, turnabout is fair, so the Journal of Contemporary Economic Policy reports that a percentage point change in a soda tax would affect body mass index by very little, perhaps just 0.003 percent.

Green argues there is good enough evidence to start cutting back now.

"We know sugar is 7 percent of the caloric intake of individuals — that is 20 pounds of obesity a year.

"You take a kid who is 40 or 50 pounds overweight and remove soda from their diet, over two years they will go to a normal weight," Green said.

The tax is not an easy answer. Humans have a lot of ways to get fat and, as we all know from the TV commercials, there are a lot of things to consume besides soda.

"Kids today are sedentary," says Lowell Kalapa, president of the Hawaii Tax Foundation.

"Kids are not moving and people in Hawaii don’t walk. So you can’t just blame it on sugar; that is just an easy way out," Kalapa said.

Part of the debate is on what else to serve. A trip to the supermarket shows you that eating healthy is not cheap. Fresh fruits and vegetables are a lot more expensive than Coke and Fruit Loops. So it follows that the tax on soda could be used to subsidize cheaper veggies and fruits. That sort of thinking has the libertarians pawing at the window and right-wingers hollering about a "nanny state" running our lives.

Green counters that he would be more understanding of libertarian howls if the state was not already in the business of providing health care for the poor.

"There are diabetes programs, community health centers, more than a billion dollars in costs. If we were out of that business, maybe it wouldn’t be our business, but the state has an interest in the people’s well-being, and also there is a financial cost. Going forward, we won’t have to subsidize the health care system as much," Green says.

In an election year, taxing anything, especially something as filled with complications as sugary soda, may be too much — but next year things could change.

Then we will see who is the politician brave enough to tackle the big issue: SPAM.

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Richard Borreca writes on politics every Tuesday, Friday and Sunday. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.