Saving the black children.
The Seattle City Council passed a soda tax Monday that will place a new fee on sugary beverages sold within the city.
“The scientific evidence is incontrovertible … sugar-sweetened beverage consumption leads to negative health outcomes,” said Councilmember Tim Burgess shortly before voting to pass the soda tax. “Communities of color and young people are disproportionately targeted by the beverage industry’s advertising and marketing campaigns. Black children and teens see twice as many ads for soda and other sweetened beverages compared to white children and other teens.”
Burgess argued the sugary drinks are the leading source of excess calories and are linked to heart disease, dental disease and other chronic illnesses, disproportionately affecting minorities.
“Daily consumption of just one sugary drink increases a child’s chance of obesity by 55 percent and diabetes by 26 percent,” he said.
The new soda tax places a .0175 per ounce fee on sweetened beverages. The tax is initially paid for by distributors, but the cost will likely be passed along to the customer. The city estimates it will raise more than $23 million from the tax in 2018, which it intends to put toward reducing the academic achievement gap between white and minority students, as well as expand access to healthy food.
“Think before you do anymore taxes on us or our customers,” he said.
Others criticized the city for only targeting sugary drinks that are more often purchased by lower-income and minority residents. Yet products more often purchased by wealthier residents were excluded from the tax.
“It is regressive and it hurts working people and the poor the most and it will result in the loss of jobs,” said Pete Lamb with Teamsters Local 174.
“We absolutely oppose the exception on hand-crafted beverages. It is elitist and it absolutely undermines the credibility of this proposal in the first place,” he added.
The amendment aimed at exempting hand crafted beverages did not gain approval from the council before the tax passed.
Just drink water
it isn’t really regressive. Since poor people are buying their sugary drinks with food stamps, people who earn enough to pay taxes are really the ones paying for it.
If they were genuinely worried about obesity and diabetes, they’d stop accepting EBT for sugary sodas.
All the concern-signaling about the health issues were nothing but a smokescreen. They just want the tax dollars. And the supposed “gaps” in academic achievement won’t go anywhere.
Do as we say. We are smarter than you. Resistance is futile. We are the Borg.
If they tax sodas, fewer people will be able to buy Pepsis and give them to others to bring about world peace and prevent riots.
What’s-her-face Kardashian can still afford them, but she got hers free in the commercial.
Another sin-tax: tobacco, alcohol, fuel, now sugar. Keep it up pols!
And Dianny is correct, the “poor” use EBT to pay for this so it will get paid by the working middle class. Additionally it will cut into their budget, though. So they will eventually raise that as a cost-of-living excuse due to their own raising of exactly that. Idiots!
The science is also incontrovertible that being born with a penis does make you a man.
Stupidity leads to even more negative health outcomes.
Is this now known as Seattle city values?
Incontrovertible…is that what they are using now to replace “settled science”?
So are they going to outlaw illegally untaxed pop from outside the Seattle city limits from coming into Seattle? Woohoo, they’ve just created soda pop bootleggers and a black market for untaxed pop. Fat slobs will be hit the hardest but it won’t stop them from drinking their sugary drinks. Way to go morons in Seattle. And will it apply at Safeco Field (Go Mariners) and Century Link Field on game days?
If you buy a fountain drink the clerk will have to take a sip to see if its sugary or diet.
does this mean that eventually congress will have to give a big boost to the sugar and corn syrup producers subsidies they all receive as a result of reduced sales when the rest of country follows suit ?
tell me when they get around to taxing big city cabbies for not bathing daily.
or
the homeless for not having housing.
I want to watch the cair or democrat press conference telling the government how un-american that law will be and how that’s not us.
well at least they are not taxing “tea” or “stamps”, those have been known to start revolutions.
They should also cut out flavored chips; you can only get plain generic chips.
And you can’t get any dip for your chips with EBT.
Doritos and brand name flavored chips are only for the people with jobs.
tax it “for the children”…getting tiresome
When soda is outlawed, only outlaws will have soda!
As with traffic cams, this is more about revenue than safety.
This is nothing more than a cash grab so the politicians have more money to piss away. “We are doing this for the poor. We are do this for the disadvantaged. Save the puppies. Save the children.” It’s all bullshit, but a “give us cash to piss away” tax plan probably won’t go anywhere.
Just recently, Santa Fe, NM failed to pass a soda tax-for now.
The true answer to budget problems is to cut spending. Most of this tax will never help the kids. It will continue to be spent elsewhere, and so, the ruse continues.
Seattle’s Mayor isn’t happy to simply be gay, he needs to tell everybody in King County “here, suck on my soda bottle”.
Electing anti-American, putrid, scum sucking pukes also leads to negative mental and physical health outcomes!
“Black children and teens see twice as many ads for soda and other sweetened beverages compared to white children and other teens.” How the hell does he figure that? Do blacks kids watch television twice as much as white kids? Ride the bus twice as much? Too much sugar that young can and does lead to health problems but that is the parents responsibility to control not the states. As mentioned before disallow sugar loaded pop from the EBT cards, send literature out to families in the city explaining why they should but back on pop. Hell, it probably won’t work but taxing a product used by all because of abuse by a few then dumping the extra money into general revenue to be abused by city council and the mayor won’t solve the problem. Hell, make pop a schedule 3 drug requiring a prescription. That would make the progressive overlords happy.
If it’s so bad, they should just ban it. Maybe they could call the ban something catchy like, say, “Prohibition”.