Jack Tame: Cane obesity with a sugar tax

We're fat and we need to tax sugar soon-as, writes Jack Tame. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

Look at us! We're too fat.

Look around a crowd. Look at people in the supermarket car park or, best of all, look around a Westfield food court.

We are definitely too fat. Our diabetes rates are too high. Our heart-disease numbers are terrible. We're fat and we need to tax sugar soon-as.

Perhaps people are finally catching on.

A paper in the New Zealand Medical Journal reckons the percentage of Kiwis supporting a tax on fizzy drinks has noticeably increased.

Good. News flash: taxing stuff works. If you haven't been to Europe lately, you'll probably not be surprised to hear that cigarettes are generally much cheaper there than they are in New Zealand.

You'll also not be surprised to hear more Europeans than New Zealanders haven't yet kicked the smoking habit. Funny that.

I'd be all for absolute personal freedom if someone else's freedom didn't affect mine.

I wouldn't give a toss if someone else wanted to smoke so long as I didn't have to breathe it in too, and so long as I wouldn't be on the hook for helping with the cost of their medical bills.

That's the irony with sugar: we are already being taxed. Just not at the source. Every person downed by diabetes or obesity-related illnesses, and every kid to need a new set of teeth, is costing us as taxpayers.

Mexico is doing better. It's one of the few countries fatter than us. The average person gets through half a litre of fizzy drink every day.

In Mexico it's not unusual to see someone drinking Coke for breakfast.

But Mexico slapped a 10 per cent tax on sugary drinks. In just a year, sales dropped 6 per cent and in lower-income communities where people are generally more affected, the impact was even larger.

The speed of the sales decline is increasing and many are pushing to double Mexico's tax to 20 per cent.

Sweet. Logical. Easy.

Now remind me. If we sting for cigarettes, we sting for booze and we sting to burn diesel in trucks, why hasn't the percentage of Kiwis supporting a tax increased to 100 per cent?

• Jack Tame is on Newstalk ZB Saturdays, 9am-midday