Soda taxes still not working

A noted anti-obesity campaigner was recently celebrating Scotland introducing more nanny state laws and promised that evidence of their efficacy would be forthcoming. When I asked her about this evidence, she told me that you would have to be literally crazy to expect an anti-obesity policy to actually reduce obesity.

Note that I didn't ask for this tranche of policies to 'solve' obesity, merely that they would reduce it somewhat. She seems to think that they won't, so that makes two of us.

Meanwhile, real world evidence on sugar taxes continues to appear.

Oakland's Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax: Impacts on Prices, Purchases and Consumption by Adults and Children

We find that roughly 60 percent of the tax was passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. There was a slight decrease in the volume of SSBs purchased per shopping trip in Oakland and a small increase in purchases at stores outside of the city, and we find some evidence of increased shopping by Oakland residents at stores outside of the city.

We do not find evidence of substantial changes in the overall consumption of SSBs or of added sugars consumed through beverages for either adults or children after the tax.

Yet another 'public health' win!

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