If your favourite sugary drink is sold with heavy tax, will you still drink it regularly? A major international study thinks it’ll deter people, especially the poor. This aims to lay to rest concerns about whether taxing products like sugar, alcohol and tobacco reduces unhealthy behaviour and non-communicable diseases (NCDs) arising from it.
The series of five papers published in The Lancet says that these ‘sin taxes’ not just work but go a long way in helping the poor rather than ‘penalising’ them. It adds that the impact of NCDs is increasing in low and middle-income countries.
This study comes a day before UK introduced a sugar tax. And now, experts want other countries to follow suit to curb unhealthy eating, drinking and smoking habits.
These lifestyle habits have triggered a dramatic rise in NCDs like cancer, diabetes, heart disease and stroke. They’ve beaten infectious diseases to become to biggest killers globally.