THE relationship between the imposition of a sugar tax and a reduction of adult and juvenile body mass is by no means clear, according to the evidence before us. Jason Fletcher, in the Journal of Public Economics 94 (2010), found that "soft drink taxation as currently practised in the US leads to a moderate reduction in soft drink consumption by children and adolescents. This small reduction is offset by increases in consumption of other high-calorie drinks."Lisa Powell, in the Journal of Adolescent Health 45 (2009), established "no statistically significant associations between state-level soda taxes and adolescent body mass index (BMI)".However, Adam Briggs, in the British Medical Journal 347 (2013), found a 20% tax on sugar-sweetened drinks was estimated to reduce the number of obese adults by 1.3% or 180,000 people, and the number of overweight people by 0.9%, or 285,000 individuals.Briggs adds there is "overwhelming evidence of a link between excessive sweetened beverage consum...
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