Increased alcohol sales: an undesired outcome of soda taxes.  

Taxing sodas is not a new idea.  It has been mentioned every several years for as long as I have been alive.  The idea is that if you tax it enough, it will reduce consumption.  Well, it worked for tobacco, so it should work for soda, right?  Taxing soft drinks may reduce their consumption and sales, but the tax may also have other effects that you might not have considered.  The problem is that tobacco is one in which there are very few alternatives.  I’m not what you would consider a soda tax fan, but I am not a soda fan either.  I have long railed on both soda taxes as being a poorly conceived notion of punishing the drinkers of soda.   The idea that a sin tax would reduce the sales of sugar-sweetened beverages is bogus because multiple alternatives may even be worse for you than soda.  New research confirms the notion that soda taxes are unlikely to work.  

The research, entitled “Effect of increasing the price of sugar-sweetened beverages on alcoholic beverage purchases: an economic analysis of sales data,” was published by the British Medical Journal in December of 2017​[1]​.  The study looked at data from nearly 32,000 households from January 2012 to December 2013 before and after the implementation of a soda tax.  The researchers found that an increase in the price of sugar-sweetened beverages did reduce sales but was associated with increased purchases of lager and other alcohol-containing drinks.  There was some variability in alcohol purchases based upon the level of sugar in taxed beverages.  The most interesting observation was that the effects of price rises are greatest in the low-income group.  The lower income group was more likely to purchase juices and lager in place of the taxed beverage.