By AMERICAN HEART ASSOCIATION NEWS
Chicago’s county stepped closer on Thursday to being the largest area in the country to institute a sweetened beverage tax.
After nearly five hours of debate and dozens of speakers, the Cook County Board of Commissioners voted 9-8 to add a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages, such as sodas, flavored teas and sports drinks.
Also taxed are diet colas and other drinks containing artificial sweeteners, but it excludes milk and medically necessary beverages.
The American Heart Association called the move “a major victory for the health of the county’s most vulnerable communities.”
“Research shows this tax will reduce consumption of sugary beverages and, in turn, lead to a decrease in the chronic diseases that are currently devastating our low-income and minority communities,” said Dr. Karen Larimer, president of the AHA’s Metro Chicago Board of Directors. “The financial, emotional and physical toll of diabetes, heart disease and cancer far exceed the financial impact of this tax on Cook County residents.”
The decision comes a couple of days after a resounding election day success for soda tax advocates – with 62 percent of the vote in San Francisco; 61 percent in Oakland, California; 71 percent in Albany, California; and 54 percent in Boulder, Colorado. Boulder’s was a 2-cents-per-ounce tax, while the Bay Area cities passed 1-cent-per-ounce versions. Those taxes all are on beverages where sugar is added.
Those four cities follow Berkeley, California, whose residents voted in a tax in 2014, followed by the Navajo Nation, whose government approved a junk food tax, that included sugary drinks.
Then, this summer, Philadelphia’s city council approved a 1.5-cent-per-ounce tax, a move being challenged in court by the American Beverage Association.
Still, the stakes are high in Cook County. Home to Chicago and its suburbs, it has 5.2 million people – more residents than all the cities who have passed the tax combined.
Board President Toni Preckwinkle introduced the sugary tax measure – which is projected to bring in nearly $224 million annually – to help balance the county’s struggling budget, beginning with the new fiscal year Dec. 1.
Preckwinkle said raising taxes wasn’t her first choice, but it would help the county become financially stable, and it would show “a commitment to public health by supporting and expanding the services we provide.”
Representatives from the beverage association and its supporters, including the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, and workers and executives from Dr Pepper Snapple Group, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola, spoke at Thursday’s meeting, calling it a regressive tax that would hurt businesses and workers.
“We will be reducing our footprint in Cook County if this tax is passed,” said Todd Eveland, Midwest region vice president for PepsiCo.
But supporters of the tax who packed the meeting room said it will help working and low-income families, who are disproportionately affected by the burden of health costs and chronic diseases associated with sugar-loaded drinks.
“Stand up for good health in Cook County,” said Chicago City Alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, who said the area he represents is 67 percent Latino and has an “epidemic of diabetes.”
“Don’t fall for the message from Big Beverage,” he said. “They are looking out for their bottom line, we have to look out for our working families.”
A study done by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health said a sugar-sweetened drink tax in Cook County would save nearly $222 million in healthcare costs over the next decade. The study, the Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost Effectiveness Study, predicts such a drink tax in the county would cause a 7 percent drop in the incidence of diabetes when it reaches full effect in a few years and 37,000 fewer cases of obesity by the end of 2025.
The World Health Organization on Oct. 11 called on governments to tax sugary drinks as part of the global strategy to combat chronic disease and obesity.
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How much of this will go directly to funding the health care of the people (all of us) they assume have insufficient intelligence to make their own decision about sugar containing ingestibles? I am guessing none really. It will be put into “education” which wont provide an insulin pen to the little old lady who desperately needs one because shee cant see well enough to draw up insulin into a syringe from a large vial. Are they going to tax potatoes, sweet potatos, butter beans, carrots, bread, pasta, cakes, or pies? They are loaded with sugar too! More taxes To support government interventions and oversight? People have choices everyday, they ultimately have to decide their own fate. Raise individual health care premiums or drop coverage but dont make all of us suffer. I see poeple every day who make the worst choicesto, (this really happened) choosing to play the slots instead of buying heart and diabetic medication. Guess what? Ther person was back in the hospital in DKA and a B/P of 260/128 with in 2 weeks. The money was gone, no meds at home. “The meds you gave me didnt work because i am sick again”. “The meds didnt work because you didnt get any. We called the pharmacy and they told us you never showed and after 2 weeks they returned the meds to stock. The meds wont work if they are still in the bottle!” I could go on about bad choices but what really urks me is the idea that the government knows best and we peons are too stupid to do the right thing, or even have the brain power to understand the consequences of our choices and actions, therefore big brother MUST step in and protect dumb little us.
Thank you AHA/ASA for supporting and promoting and encouraging a healthier lifestyle (exercising and eating healthy), we appreciate your support.