Taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and soft drinks are fair and produce health gains, review finds

Taxes on alcohol, tobacco, and soft drinks offer a particularly effective strategy for reducing chronic disease among the poorest people in society who are disproportionately affected by unhealthy products, a review has found.1

Lawrence Summers, from Harvard University in Boston, USA, said in an accompanying editorial, “One of the most common arguments used to oppose taxing tobacco, alcohol or sugary beverages is the claim that such taxes are regressive—that it is unfair to make poorer people pay a larger share of their limited household incomes to consume these products than richer people.”2

He said …