PAHO wants higher taxes to curb harmful consumption of alcohol and sugary drinks

The Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO) says lev­els of health tax­es on al­co­hol and sug­ar sweet­ened bev­er­ages in the Amer­i­c­as re­main too low to sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce con­sump­tion and pre­vent non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases (NCDs), even as the re­gion records some of the high­est con­sump­tion lev­els in the world.

In its lat­est re­ports, ti­tled “Tax­es on al­co­holic bev­er­ages in the Amer­i­c­as” and “Tax­es on sweet­ened bev­er­ages in the Amer­i­c­as” , show that tax lev­els across the Amer­i­c­as re­main be­low glob­al av­er­ages, lim­it­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of one of the most cost-ef­fec­tive pub­lic health in­ter­ven­tions avail­able.

For beer, the me­di­an to­tal tax bur­den in the re­gion stands at 25.5 per cent, com­pared to a glob­al me­di­an of 29.4 per cent, while tax­es on spir­its av­er­age 31.5 per cent, be­low the glob­al me­di­an of 38.7 per cent.

In the case of sug­ar-sweet­ened bev­er­ages, the me­di­an tax bur­den in the Amer­i­c­as rep­re­sents just 17.1 per cent of the fi­nal re­tail price, slight­ly be­low the glob­al me­di­an of 17.8 per cent, and one-third of coun­tries in the Amer­i­c­as still do not ap­ply any tax on these prod­ucts.

PA­HO’s re­ports high­light that the Amer­i­c­as, par­tic­u­lar­ly Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, face some of the high­est con­sump­tion lev­els glob­al­ly for both sug­ary drinks and al­co­hol. Adults in the re­gion drink an av­er­age of 7.8 serv­ings of sug­ar-sweet­ened bev­er­ages per week, sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er than the glob­al av­er­age of 2.7 serv­ings.

PA­HO said the in­creased con­sump­tion of these prod­ucts is as­so­ci­at­ed with ma­jor health risks, in­clud­ing over­weight and obe­si­ty — af­fect­ing 67.5 per cent of adults — di­a­betes, car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­ease, can­cer, liv­er dis­ease, and oth­er non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases, as well as in­juries and vi­o­lence linked to harm­ful al­co­hol use.

“Health tax­es are not on­ly de­signed to re­duce the con­sump­tion of prod­ucts that are harm­ful to health, but they al­so gen­er­ate rev­enue that gov­ern­ments can in­vest in health and so­cial pri­or­i­ties. Well de­signed tax­es can help de­lay the ini­ti­a­tion of al­co­hol use among young peo­ple, re­duce harm­ful drink­ing, and low­er con­sump­tion of sug­ary drinks linked to obe­si­ty and chron­ic dis­ease. ”

How­ev­er, the re­ports note that many coun­tries in the re­gion con­tin­ue to ap­ply low tax rates, nar­row tax bases, or fail to reg­u­lar­ly ad­just tax­es to ac­count for in­fla­tion, weak­en­ing the long term im­pact of these mea­sures.

In ad­di­tion, cer­tain prod­ucts that pose health risks—such as sug­ar sweet­ened dairy bev­er­ages and fruit juices—are of­ten not taxed, which can shift con­sump­tion to­ward these un­taxed al­ter­na­tives and re­duce the ef­fec­tive­ness of tax poli­cies aimed at im­prov­ing health.

Sev­er­al coun­tries have made progress in re­cent years. Bar­ba­dos and Colom­bia in­tro­duced new tax­es on un­healthy prod­ucts, while Do­mini­ca in­creased tax­es on to­bac­co, al­co­hol, and sug­ary drinks.

“In many coun­tries of the Amer­i­c­as, ex­ist­ing tax­es have not been de­signed in line with in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices and re­main too low to mean­ing­ful­ly in­flu­ence con­sump­tion pat­terns, re­duce ex­po­sure to health risks, or gen­er­ate the lev­el of health and fis­cal gains that ef­fec­tive health tax­es can de­liv­er”, said Dr. Anselm Hen­nis, Di­rec­tor of PA­HO’s De­part­ment of Non-com­mu­ni­ca­ble Dis­eases.

To max­imise both health im­pact and fis­cal ben­e­fits, PA­HO rec­om­mends that coun­tries strength­en health tax poli­cies through well-de­signed tax struc­tures, ap­pro­pri­ate tax rates, broad prod­uct cov­er­age, and reg­u­lar ad­just­ments for in­fla­tion.

There is al­so need for ro­bust im­ple­men­ta­tion of tax poli­cies, on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing and ev­i­dence-based re­forms to en­sure that tax­es ef­fec­tive­ly re­duce harm­ful con­sump­tion and con­tribute to im­prov­ing pop­u­la­tion health.

“PA­HO is com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal sup­port to mem­ber states to strength­en the im­ple­men­ta­tion of health tax­es, an ev­i­dence-based mea­sure that con­tributes to re­duc­ing risk fac­tors and pro­tect­ing pop­u­la­tion health,” Dr. Hen­nis added.

The re­ports were pre­sent­ed dur­ing a we­bi­nar or­ga­nized by PA­HO in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty and con­tribute to on­go­ing re­gion­al and glob­al ef­forts to mon­i­tor fis­cal poli­cies that sup­port pub­lic health goals. —WASH­ING­TON, D.C. (CMC)