|
 Purchases of sugar-sweetened beverages were down nearly 10 percent
in the second year of the tax, a new study shows.
“The tax is working” toward its objective, senior author Shu Wen Ng
said in a phone interview.
Ng, a health economist and a professor at the University of North
Carolina in Chapel Hill, and her team estimated that Mexicans bought
9.7 percent less sugary drinks in 2015 than they would have before
the tax took effect.
In an effort to wean consumers off sugary drinks and reduce the
epidemics of obesity and diabetes, Mexico imposed a peso-per-liter
excise tax at the beginning of 2014.
Mexicans cut their purchases of soda and other sugar-sweetened
beverages by 5.5 percent the first year that the tax was imposed,
the study calculated.
Researchers used Nielsen survey data on store purchases for nearly
6,650 urban Mexican households and estimated beverage purchases
after adjusting for inflation, population growth and seasonal
differences.
The poorest households showed the biggest drops in purchases of
taxed sugary beverages, an average decrease of nearly 12 percent
over two years.
Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the U.S. Preventive Services
Task Force and a professor at the University of California, San
Francisco, has also been studying the public health effects of
Mexico’s soda tax.
She described the new study as “encouraging for many cities and
countries around the world which are exploring ways to shift the
rising tide of diabetes.”
Similar taxes have been levied in countries around the globe - from
Colombia to France and South Africa, and in American cities, from
Berkeley, California, to Philadelphia.
A 2016 study found that low-income Berkeley neighborhoods slashed
sugar-sweetened beverage consumption by more than one-fifth after
the Northern California city enacted the nation’s first soda tax.
“We thought the tax might be an important public health measure, and
it turns out it is likely to be,” Bibbins-Domingo said in a phone
interview after reviewing the new findings.
They contradict industry reports of a drop in the effect of the tax
in its second year.
[to top of second column] |
The International Council of Beverages Associations, which
represents the soda industry, disputed the new study’s results in a
prepared statement. “First and foremost, this study does not show
any impact from the tax on the obesity rates in Mexico,” the
statement says.
Ng responded: “The current obesity rates crept up over time. Trying
to slow that down and reversing the trend also will take time.”
“To expect that one policy alone is going to be successful in one or
two years is ludicrous,” she said.
“If the beverage industry doesn’t think the tax is actually working
in terms of reducing consumption, why are they fighting it so much?”
she asked.
An October report from the World Health Organization recommended
taxing sugary drinks to lower consumption and to reduce obesity,
diabetes and tooth decay.
Previous studies showed that 70 percent of Mexican adults and 30
percent of Mexican children were overweight or obese in 2012.
Mexicans get one-fifth of their calories from sugary drinks, and 14
percent of them have diabetes, according to a 2016 study conducted
by Bibbins-Domingo.
Mexico’s soda tax is on course to prevent diabetes, heart attacks
and strokes in more than 200,000 adults and to save nearly $1
billion in healthcare costs over a decade, her 2016 study found.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2mc86JD Health Affairs, online February 22,
2017.
[© 2017 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2017 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. |
