Tennessee needs a tax on sugary beverages
It is time for Tennessee to put a “sin tax” on soda, sweet tea and any other sugar-sweetened beverage.
Tennessee is now top in the country for overweight or obese children. While there are many complex reasons for childhood obesity, excess sugar consumption is a major cause. Soda is the largest source of sugar in children.
Tennessee is second only to Mississippi in soda consumption. An excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages is needed to reduce sugar consumption in children and reduce the continuing rise of obesity in Tennessee’s children.
The state’s children continue to get heavier despite the rates of childhood obesity nationally leveling out.
In recent years, the percentage of overweight or obese children in Tennessee rose from 34.1 percent to 37.7 percent while the U.S. remained around 31 percent. This means that over a third of our children are at risk for diabetes.
The number one risk factor for type 2 diabetes in children is obesity. Since the beginning of the childhood obesity epidemic in the 1980s, the incidence of type 2 diabetes has doubled as has the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages.
Type 2 diabetes, once called adult diabetes, is a more aggressive disease in children. Children with type 2 diabetes are more likely to develop its serious complications such as kidney failure, heart disease and liver disease.
This places an appalling burden of life-long illness on children and their families. Reducing type 2 diabetes would improve individual lives and the state’s budget. The cost to Tenncare for diabetes-related medical claims was $209 million in 2015, up $10 million from 2014.
An excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages works two ways.
First, it reduces consumption if the tax is large enough — at least 1 cent per ounce. A tax on sugary beverages in Philadelphia resulted in a 40 percent drop in soda consumption in the first two months.
Second, it incentivizes manufacturers to increase production of sugarless beverages. An added benefit to the excise tax is revenue. An excise tax of a penny per ounce on sugary beverages in 2018 would have generated over $300 million for Tennessee.
I’m not advocating for sugar-free diets in children. I have memories from my own childhood of enjoying a Nehi down at the store, while my grandmother and uncles sat in canebottomed chairs solving the world’s problems.
Those memories are precious because a cold soda out of a metal cooler was a treat. Today, however, there are children who have a sugar-sweetened beverage with every meal.
It’s this daily consumption that must stop. Soda should be a costly, occasional treat. Reducing sugar in the diet of our children is critical to child health now and to adult health in the future. Obesity in childhood leads to obesity as an adult.
Over a third of the state’s future adults are at risk for diseases of obesity – diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease and fatty liver disease. This means that over a third of Tennessee’s workforce in the next decade will spend more time out sick than working. We cannot be an economicallystrong state by ignoring the health of our children.
An excise tax on sugar-sweetened beverages is not the total solution to childhood obesity, but it is an important first step to ensuring a healthy future for Tennessee.
Beth Chatham is faculty at Cumberland University’s school of nursing and a PH.D. student at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.