Taxing Big Sugar

David Hirsayni:

"And he shall smite the earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the Pepsi drinker!"

There has to be a statement about soft drinks tucked somewhere in Leviticus. I have assurances, after all, that such beverages are wicked.

Sin taxes are normally levied on so-called vices like drinking, smoking and gambling. Now Congress is "studying" a proposal to legislate morality by taxing sugary beverages — which is to say it is "studying" whether such a tax would be politically feasible.

According to the executive director of the Center for "Science" in the Public Interest (CSPI), "Soda is clearly one of the most harmful products in the food supply, and it's something government should discourage the consumption of."

There is nothing "clear" about it. Soda can be harmful, it can be harmless and it is always tasty with a cheese-infused burrito — which we should affix with a massive "discouragement" tax if we're going to be consistent about our gut-busting peccadilloes.

The selective tax would also pursue energy and fruit drinks, but not politically correct, high-everything beverages like Frappuccinos. No one wants a violent insurrection in the malls and trendy urban cores of America.

The CSPI also wants government to "pressure" food companies to produce healthier fare (because, God knows, there are barely any wholesome options available for the masses), dramatically raise taxes on alcohol (what fresh hell is this?), and dictate the level of sodium allowable in packaged and restaurant food.

The CSPI is the group that once laughably claimed 150,000 people perish yearly from salt intake (the "Forgotten Killer"), despite lack of any evidence and the ongoing debate regarding the real effect of sodium.

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This should go up there with the EPA's coming tax on exhaling carbon dioxide. The more interesting question is whether Congress will quit subsidizing sugar production or just increase it to make up for the loss of sugar abusers.

Health experts claim that we all consume enough sugar to kill us if we did not have insulin to convert it to fat. But it makes more sense to control our intake without turning Big Sugar into Big Tobacco.