LETTER FROM WASHINGTON: Sugar tax debate produces no clear winners
IN 2015 Berkeley, California, became the first American municipality to implement a tax on sugary beverages to cut consumption. Set at about a rand a regular-sized can, the impost seems to have worked. But before the Treasury gets too excited, let’s note that the operative word here is "seems".In November 2014, Berkeley and nearby San Francisco voted on identical proposals to tax non-diet Coke and its ilk. The former said yes, the latter no. University of California researchers reckoned this had the makings of "a perfect natural experiment" to compare consumption patterns. They did before-and-after street interviews.Before Berkeley’s tax went into effect, residents of both communities admitted to drinking an average of 1.25 sugared cool drinks a day. A year later, Berkeleyites were down to just one a day, while untaxed San Franciscans guzzled at the old pace.Self-reported consumption data is always problematic. Note, too, that the full cost of Berkeley’s tax was not passed on to con...
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