Support for ‘sugar tax’
Should the state be telling me how to parent my child?
My personal answer is an emphatic “no.”
After all, what has the government done right in the last 10 years? Twenty years? Fifty years? Have they proven themselves reliable in caring for my family?
Here is the issue I am wrestling with now. Gov. David Ige has proposed a tax on sugary beverages (Tribune-Herald, Jan. 31). There are two bills — House Bill 994 and Senate Bill 1148 — which ask for a 2 cent tax on each fluid ounce of all sugar-sweetened beverages sold in the state.
They say it will raise revenue, which is needed. I understand that. I don’t want essential services to be cut.
Some say that it will harm small businesses that are struggling to survive. I understand that, too. I don’t want more businesses to close.
So, now what?
Now, I use my brain as a parent and resident of Hawaii to weigh the pros and cons.
Obesity is an epidemic that causes much greater long-term health problems than almost anything else around which we currently legislate.
We legislate marijuana use, alcohol sales, tobacco, etc. We legislate the driving age and the age of consent for a sexual relationship. We even have legal processes in place for how deep I should dig my septic tank, and what kind of wires I can use when building my home.
Let’s remember that obesity presents real challenges to the health of our community, including our children. It leads to heart problems, Type 2 diabetes and a myriad other issues. Lives are cut short by obesity every day.
I am a working mom. I am busy, and life can get hectic. I don’t think about physical health as often as I should.
The COVID-19 global pandemic complicates things further. I say “yes” to snacks and drinks and screen time more often than I would like to, because half of the world is closed, and I am emotionally exhausted most of the time.
I don’t want the government telling me what to do with my child. That being said, if sugary drinks costing a few extra cents per ounce makes me think for an additional three seconds about the choice I am about to make, I don’t think that is a bad thing.
If you knew how bad smoking cigarettes was 50 years ago, would you have been OK with making it a tiny bit harder for our kids to get their hands on a pack of smokes? Think about that, because that is the choice facing us today with regard to the sugar tax.
I am going to choose to support these two bills. I’m supporting these bills because I do not want to feel as though I passed up an opportunity to give the next generation a healthier start to life.
I am not choosing to give up my freedom to parent as I wish. Rather, I’m choosing to give the next generation a chance to make their own choices — choices that don’t only revolve around which brand of walker to use or which heart surgeon has the better reviews.
Zahava Zaidoff
Captain Cook
Enough already
Once and for all we should shut up about “UH not fit to manage mountain” (Tribune-Herald, Feb. 3) and free humanity’s most important benefactor in history — science — from the straitjacket of outdated cultural nonsense dealing with the dead, rather than the living, in regard to the White Mountain (Maunakea), the most important spot on the “Spaceship Earth,” every inch of which is sacred.
Abolghassem Abraham Sadegh
Hilo
