Subscribe to the RSS feed.What does tobacco have to do with obesity?
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CHP | Posted on: May 7th, 2009
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The Oregon Legislature is currently considering a sixty-cent tax on tobacco products that would be used to fund programs that “prevent or reduce tobacco use and obesity and recover smoking-related costs.”
The use of tobacco tax revenues to recover smoking related costs is logical. But what about obesity?
While some argue that it is irresponsible policy to fund schools or health insurance programs on the backs of smokers, who are disproportionally of lower income, is using tobacco tax revenue to fund obesity programs just as irresponsible?
Some might say it is wrong to connect the two, as smoking and obesity are completely separate threats to the public’s health.
However, they represent two of the most expensive and preventable health risk factors facing our country, and increasingly, our world.
In an April 2005 British Medical Journal article entitled “Tobacco and Obesity Epidemics: Not so different after all,” authors Chopra and Hill argue that large multinational companies control much of what we eat, and the strategies required to fight the obesity epidemic are very similar to those used to fight tobacco. Also, as with multinational tobacco companies, the food industry is actively resisting public health attempts to change current practices.
Expenditure on advertising by the food industry dwarfs that by the tobacco companies. In the United States alone the food industry spent over $30 billion on direct advertising and promotions—more than any other industry. Food advertising is rising in developing countries and has tripled in South East Asia, for example, in recent years.
Still – tobacco-related health costs and those generated from obesogenic environments are not one in the same.
Every dollar collected by the government from the tobacco tax is money that a smoker – often someone with very little income – could have used to spend on food, rent, or transportation. Government thus has a colossal obligation to allocate those funds responsible manner.
So is it responsible government policy to dedicate tobacco revenues to fund obesity prevention?
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I see the connection in a few different ways, although I’m still not sure if it’s sound policy. Tobacco use and obesity both directly take their toll on the heart, so it makes sense to connect revenue collected from one to output designed to prevent the other. That way, if you’re smoking cigarettes, you also might be benefiting from a government program that is helping you eat healthier.
I still feel like there are more sensible ways to increase revenue such as revamping our corporate tax structure to ensure that corporate citizens pay their share. Oregon has horribly low business taxes, yet Portland and Eugene are both relatively known as business-unfriendly. We’re doing something wrong there.
But specifically health revenue, I think the first mistake was gutting the provider tax out of HB 2009, but that was a long shot anyway. That tax would have funded health care plans for the nearly 120,000 uninsured kids in Oregon. Might have been a good idea…