Thursday, March 16, 2017

A New Heart and Stroke Funded Report Calls For a "Sugary Drink" Tax

Not a soda tax. And not a sugar-sweetened beverage tax. Instead Canada's Heart and Stroke Foundation's (HSF) latest funded report makes the case for a "sugary drink" tax which would include of course sodas, sugar-sweetened beverages (chocolate milks and drinkable yogurts for instance), but also naturally sugary drinks like 100% juice.

According to the report, Canadians purchased an average of 444ml of sugary drinks per day. And that's a per capita average which includes people like the 5 members of my family who purchase an average of none a day - so clearly those who are drinking sugary drinks, are actually averaging more than that. Dishearteningly, things are even worse for youth with the report finding them buying 578ml per day for Canadians between 9-18 years old.

That's a huge amount, and while some might be confused given the regular coverage of decreasing soda and juice consumption, the report explains,
"Over the past 12 years (2004 to 2015), the per capita sales volume has decreased for regular soft drinks (-27%), fruit drinks (-22%), and 100% juice (-10%). In contrast, per capita sales volume increased for energy drinks (+638%), sweetened coffee (+579%), flavoured water (+527%), drinkable yogurt (+283%), sweetened tea (+36%), flavoured milk (+21%), and sports drinks (+4%). In 2004, sales of flavoured water, flavoured milk, drinkable yogurt, and energy drinks were negligible. However, by 2015, these categories accounted for approximately 18% of all sugary drink sales, and compensated for the 7% proportional reduction in sales of regular soft drinks since 2004."

Breaking it down into dollars and cents, the report estimates that sugary drink consumption will lead to over $50 billion in direct health care costs over the next 25 years coming from the costs associated with their projections of 25 years of unchecked sugary drink consumption contributing to
"900,000 new cases of type 2 diabetes, 300,000 new cases of ischemic heart disease, 100,000 new cases of cancer, and 40,000 strokes. Canadians’ sugary drink consumption is estimated to account for 63,000 deaths and almost 2.2 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs), which represent premature death or poor health."
In turn, according to their modelling, a 20% sugary drink tax would generate $43.6 billion in tax revenue as well as $11.5 billion in direct health care savings from averting many of the cases, conditions and DALYs noted above.

In my opinion it's a matter of when, not if, we'll have some form of sugary, or sugar-sweetened beverage tax in Canada, and the sooner, the better.

[If you're curious about the report's methodologies and assumptions, please head over to the HSF's media centre where they're hosting the full report.]