PUBH 7500 Program Planning And Evaluation In Public Health

To tackle the increasing prevalence of obesity, there is suggestion for taxing sugar drinks as a mean to discourage individuals consuming sugar drinks. (https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/2021926/world-health-o rganisation-urges-nations-put-lid)

(1) Discuss the pros and cons of using taxing sugar drinks to tackle obesity
(2) Using the socio-ecological model, suggest strategies to implement sugar tax in Hong Kong.

Answer

Taxing sugary drinks

In a recent World Health Organization(WHO) meeting held in Manila, the participant countries including Hong Kong were urged to impose sugar tax as a way to maintaining a healthy population. Through its suggestion, WHO referred the sugar-sweetened beverages as the cause of obesity and imposing taxes will reduce its consumptions vis a vis improved healthier people. Tax imposing is worldwide known as the only peaceful way of controlling an intake of some product and controlling such products in the market.  Although taxing the sugary beverages is a recommendation from the WHO organizations, it has conventional debates especially from the different market participant such as retailers, manufacturers and the government’s agents, each justifying why should or should not .

Sugar tax. This is the amount of tax imposed on sugary drinks also referred to as the Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax (SSBT) in some countries. Sugar tax has also be imposed by other countries in the world such as Mexico, Chile, Hungary New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Tax is defined as the compulsory contribution levied by state governments in the cost of certain services, goods and transactions.

Although they are no statistical data found on daily Hong Kong resident’s sugar intake, the health authorities have implicated one-fifth of the population are overweight due to consumption of sugary food products. The taxation of sugar drinks products, therefore, receives balanced pros and cons for its implementations.

Pros of taxing sugary drinks.

The sugar beverages tax has become a target in food taxes as they are not wholly associated with and nutrients to the body. The WHO have continuously encourage countries to adopt the sugar tax to control the unhealthy foods in the population.  In this case, countries such as Hong Kong have recently considered adopting the sugar tax to reduce the unhealthy drinks in the population in order to minimize the public bill on public health maintenance. Imposing the sugar tax into sugary drinks will definitely mean more collection in taxes where this funds can be utilized to sensitize health benefits for avoiding sugary foods. 

Fully compliant of the soft drinks tax can ease the jurisdictions on the administrative burden to manage business and government units. These can raise the importance of drafting a tax design that will reduce the overall cost of managing the sugary products manufacturers. Although will initial resistance taxes on sugary drinks can encourage sugar products manufacturers to rethink their manufacturing lines as well their market entries strategies. In such the manufactures end up on making more profits while the government will still collect more taxes. 

As the sugar content in the sweetened drinks differs, taxing such products on similar rates will discourage the uptake of those with high sugar and encourage those on little sugar. Ideally, this is a clever way and been adopted by most countries which have already adopted the sugar tax as this eventually reduce the government bills on public health related to sugar uptake. The higher volumes of taxes for high sugar drinks manufacturers will discourage them and well will turn to focus on low sugar drinks manufacturing.

Through the taxing of sugary drinks such as sodas, their prices will go up leaving their consumption reduced and the consumption is substituted with other substitutes such as fruit drinks and milk. Through the consumption of whole milk and fruit juice, the overall public health will improve as such products contain real minerals and vitamins that contribute to positive health improvements. Revenue to the government. Another advantage of imposing the sugar tax to the Hong Kong government will be increased tax collection to the national kitty. This will reduce the public debt for the annual budget creating more rooms for price reduction is non-sugary products. 

Cons of taxing sugar

Although sugar taxes can be recommended by part of the country’s population, imposing taxes on sweet food products can be seen as punishing the bad eating habits. In most cases, taxes related to food is implicated with a political opposition which can be dangerous to the success of the government's agendas. Imposing taxes on sugary drinks will increase prices for such products and eventually an economic impact on the population. [6] Ideally, sugar drinks are loved by the most in the population and some parties will spend whichever coins in their pockets to ensure they take their favorite sugar products. Imposing of sugar taxes can create a leeway for exploitation by the retailers. In most cases, traders will not increase the price of the product with exact tax increment. Traders take this chance to impose their hidden profits in the products which may not be easier to increase at normal circumstances.

A new recent research implicated in relations of health improvement and food taxes. In this, it was evident that food taxes does not create the intended assumption of the duty to reduce the consumption of such foods. In case it was evidenced people continue taking their favorite products and food taxes cannot manage to control the overall consumption.

Strategies to implement sugar tax in Hong Kong.

As we have seen food tax is a way of punishment to unhealthy consumers, this may not be exactly be felt. However, the government should use the reward strategy for healthier decisions. For instance, the Hong Kong government can fully subsidy the manufacturing and processing of whole food products from agricultural farms such as carrot juice making such sugar free drinks much cheaper. [7] Since such drinks will be lower in price the population will shift in order to save money, and this shifts demand will mean health population.

Subsiding the whole meal manufactures will result in lower prices of whole meal juices. At the 21st century, medical practitioners have been advocating for vegetable juices to improve health immunity. [8] Hong Kong can impose a tax-free environment on all vegetable juice manufacturers to encourage the presence of such products in the markets and at lower affordable prices. According to the WHO report, the large population in the world eat unhealthy knowingly but have not otherwise provided by their government.

References

Tsang E. With one in five Hong Kongers overweight, government urged to implement WHO call to tax all soft drinks. (Internet). 2016 Sep (cited 16/10/2018) Available from: https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/2021926/world-health-organisation-urges-nations-put-lid

https://www.srasanz.org/sras/news-media-faq/current-news/pros-and-cons-sugar-tax/

Cawley, John, Frisvold. “The Incidence of Taxes on Sugar-Sweetened Beverages: The Case of Berkeley, California” NBER working paper 21465. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Falbe, Jennifer, Nadia Rojas, Anna H. Grummon, Kristine A. Madsen. 2015. “Higher Retail Prices of Sugar Sweetened. Beverages 3 Months after Implementation of an Excise Tax in Berkeley, California.” American Journal of Public Health 105: 2194–201.

Powell LM, Chriqui JF, Khan T, Chaloupka FJ. Assessing the potential effectiveness of food and beverage taxes and subsidies for improving public health: A system review of prices demand and body weight outcomes. Obes Rev. 2013 Feb; 14(2):110-28. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23174017

Zhen, Chen, Eric A. Finkelstein, James Nonnemaker, Shawn Karns, and Jessica E. Todd. 2014. “Predicting the effects of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Taxes on Food and Beverage Demand in a Large Demand System.” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 96 (1): 1–25.

European Competitiveness and Sustainable Industrial Policy Consortium. 2014. “Food Taxes and Their Impact on Competitiveness in the Agri-Food Sector: Annexes to the Main Report.” Rotterdam, Netherlands: European. Competitiveness and Sustainable Industrial Policy Consortium.

Powell, LM, Chaloupka F. Food prices and obesity: Evidence and policy implications for taxes and subsidies, Milbank 2009 pages 229-257 Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19298422