_______________________________________
My response
I hope that Thai government will launch this kind of tax measures. It may help reducing consuming sugar of Thai people. Nowadays there are so many sugary products in the market. If you walk into a convenient store and look for a drinking water in refrigerators you will realize most of them are sugary drinks. Especially green tea, that is suppose to be a healthy drink but the producer add a very high level of sugar on his products to make it becomes more tasty. Some green tea companies launch a campaign to increase their sale volume by using lottery gambling. For example, one company giveaway smart phones or luxury cars to the lucky customer who drinks his product. This promotion is very successful, although the price of each green tea is not cheap but many bottles of green tea sold each day because customer want to get a prize even a chance of hitting a prize is very low. But I think the customers of this green tea will suffer from diabetes before they could win a prize. So It show that sometimes a price may not be a factor that customers decide to choose a product.
I think that charging tax on sugary products may not be the best way to help people reduces their consuming of sugar. I think the better way is giving education to people and teach them about the negative effect of consuming too much sugar. It may help them avoid eating sugary products and choose a healthier food.
_______________________________________
Reference
I agree with Aon's opinion in the last paragraph: taxing sugary drinks is not the best way to solve the very real obesity problem. For similar reasons, I think that most taxes on drugs like cigarettes and alcohol are also wrong. Using these two deadly drugs is generally a bad idea, although they must have some benefits as well or they would not have been so very popular for so very long across very different cultures, but that something is personally harmful does not seem to me a good enough reason for the government to interfere in people's lives.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the reasoning is consistent: if it seen as OK to tax alcohol because that drug is harmful to the user, then the same reasoning makes it OK to tax sugar. And chocolate cake and so on. In fact, if being harmful is a good reason to ban things, for example heroin and yaa baa, shouldn't the government also ban dangerous foods such as chocolate cake, Pepsi and the the like? Should there also be laws saying that everyone must do a minimal amount of exercise for the good of society?
I would like to know the view of nutritionist on sugar food. I used to drink and eat a lot of sugar food. My teacher in school comment on me that if you eat sugar you will be hyperactive are will deacrease my performance on study. I am not sure whether this is correct or not.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the tax should be levy on sugary products. Yet I think that we should also post tax on products with high level of sodium as well. I think the problem on sodium is far more drastic and should be deal with ASAP. overdose sugar and fat consumption can be mitigated by sufficient exercise, yet overdose sodium is not easy to deal with. Think about thousands of people that helplessly have to pay medical bills once in a while thanks to too much sodium in their nutrition.
ReplyDelete