I hardly drink soft drinks, so I say go for it. Since it s a personal choice I choose not to drink them and I will avoid the tax if it passes. Alcohol and tobbaco are already taxed at the State level, so why wouldn't the progressive City of SF start levying vice taxes on this second tier "vice" known as empty calories/junk food?
Ok, I'm only half-serious here. SF is one tax happy city. But I hear the stats of how the average caloric intake has increased over the years, dietary habits have moved from whole food to processed foods, the evils of High Fructose Corn Syrup, the tax on our health system from obesity, diabetes, etc. A lot of kids are overweight and I'm sure the correlation b/w their weight and he prevalence of sody-pop is close.
Have to agree with TC here.
As long as it's a tax issue I say why not? I would equally welcome a tax on marijuana products, which unlike HFCS, is a vice that A) is voluntarily entered into. HFCS is slipped into my childrens' lives without parent or child being easily made aware, (can you imagine the furor if C
2H
5OH, THC or PCP were found in our kids' state-funded school lunches? and B) Compared to cannabis, there are apparently
zero ancillary health benefits to HFCS. I would gladly pay to indulge the vice of cannabis,...even more than alcohol.
I think every vice should be legal, regulated & taxed. And the benchmark should be the "victimless" social costs of alcohol & tobacco. Anything with less impact should be allowed, and the rest of humanity can enjoy them legally and explore any spiritual paths that may stem from them.
Poets could drink to excess, philosophers and musicians could get stoned, theater types and salesmen could get coked & methed up, and the politicans could visit any type of kinky brothel they desired. It would all be legal, AND clearly indicated in your tax records if you were audited.
At the 'Darwin Awards' level, this is all to the good. In a few dozen generations we will have weeded out the genetic markers for those who can't handle their vices & one can assume medical advances would ameliorate the pesonal health impacts on those who can 'handle' them from the socio-economic angles.
ETA: For the same reason I am in favor of much higher gasoline taxes, in line with Europe & the developed countries in East Asia. I know it would modify my driving behavior, because it already has.