Ige’s plan to tax sugary drinks is viable and smart

The bill to add a 2-cent-per-ounce fee on sugary drinks is a much needed response to a billion-dollar industry that has wreaked havoc on our communities’ health for decades.

The benefit of the added fee will be two-fold. First, the fee will encourage people to choose healthier drink options. Second, the fee will raise revenue (estimated at $65.8 million) at a time when our government has little extra funding to support health and wellness programs for our families.

The sugary drinks revenue could be used to fund programs to make fresh fruits and vegetables more affordable, to expand physical education in schools, to make improvements to our parks, to improve oral health services or to increase access to diabetes prevention programs—just to name a few.