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She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.
Dr. Kathryn Backholer, an expert on the issue at Deakin University in Australia, said taxes on soda were “low-hanging fruit” in the fight against obesity, diabetes
and other weight-related diseases because such drinks are easily categorized to tax and sensible to target because they “have little or no nutritional value.”
Dr. Backholer and other experts said the turning point for soda tax proponents came in 2014, when Mexico
— Coca-Cola’s biggest consumer market by per capita consumption — approved a 10 percent tax.
In March 2016, the country’s health minister, Alejandro Gaviria Uribe, proposed a 20 percent tax on soda and sugar-sweetened beverages — the equivalent of about 10 cents on a liter bottle —
that became part of a larger tax overhaul backed by Colombia’s president and the Ministry of Finance.
Studies of soda taxes have shown they lead to a drop in sales of sugar-sweetened beverages — a 10 percent sales decline, for example, over the first two years of Mexico’s tax — however, such measures are so new
that there is not yet evidence of their impact on health.
“We need a national plan to fight sedentary lifestyles, better product labeling and education efforts
that teach people to eat more fruit, fish and vegetables.”
Dr. Cerón and her team got a Pyrrhic victory two weeks ago when the country’s Constitutional Court overturned the consumer agency’s decision to silence Educar
and ordered the agency to “abstain from censoring any other ad related to public health in the future,” according to the ruling.