Chocolate tax

The British Medical Association’s Scottish local medical committee conference next week will include recommendations for the government to impose a heavy tax on chocolate to fight obesity and “improve the health of the nation.” As the Scotsman reports:

We need a heavy tax on chocolate to fight obesity, says doctor

CHOCOLATE should be taxed in the same way as alcohol to tackle the obesity crisis, Scottish doctors will be told next week. Dr .David Walker, a Lanarkshire GP, … said increasing the price of products containing chocolate would help reduce consumption and bring in more money which could be used by the NHS to deal with the health problems caused by obesity….

Dr. Walker said the UK faced a "diabetic time bomb"… "One of the major causes of that has got to be chocolate. The quantities of chocolate being consumed now come into the same realm as alcohol, and all that has been said about the damage that is causing."…

"But babies and young children are on their way to being addicted to chocolate before they can even walk." Dr Walker said the government should look at defining products with certain levels of chocolate in them and tax them extra. For example, this could mean increasing the price by between 10 and 20 per cent, or even higher, he said…

Let’s look at the medical evidence behind the doctor’s proposal:

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