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EDITORIAL
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January 27, 2018
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THE EXCISE tax on sweetened beverages is not all that bad. How?
Come to think of this: Our country has widespread illnesses linked to high sugar consumption and smoking, including diabetes, cardiovascular vascular diseases, dental caries, and obesity. The Department of Education has precisely banned soft drinks from school canteens and laid down strict policies on school nutrition to spare schoolchildren from health risks brought by high sugar consumption.
By making sweetened beverages more expensive, we are discouraging consumers, the Filipino families, from high sugar consumption and making them choose healthier, less sweet or unsweetened lifestyle options.
It’s like making cigarettes more expensive so that less people will buy them, thereby lowering their risks of getting cancer, hypertension, and respiratory diseases.
We want a healthy citizenry because healthy citizens make for a healthy, productive, economically prosperous, and socially-progressive nation.
The sari-sari stores will not sell items their customers cannot afford. They will switch to selling other products. Sari-sari store owners know their customers well. Filipino consumers have many other daily necessities like soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and deodorant.
Some of the soft drinks bottlers have now been producing bottled water, tea, and coconut juice because they have learned that more Filipinos have been switching to unsweetened or less sweet beverages.
The excise tax on sweetened beverages can promote better health for Filipinos and will fund social services of the government. Come to think of this.
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