Should We Regulate Sugar Like Alcohol Or Alcohol Summary

This essay will discuss the article "Should We Regulate Sugar Like Alcohol or Tobacco?" by Art Carden, Economics Professor at Samford University and writer for Forbes magazine. There are many people in favor and many other against sugar regulation, therefore, it is going to be interesting to see both points of view. The author of the article is against sugar taxation, throughout the article, he explains his reasons for disagreeing on this regulation. However, another article that talks about the benefits of such tax is going to be analyzed, in order to compare both points of view.
Taxing sugar is not a good idea. Firstly, if we look from a different point of view, non-communicable diseases are considered wealthy diseases, and if we see that

This article is quite subjective; the author expresses fully what he feels about the topic, leaving no room for the possibility that sugar may be taxable. He even cites the works of other authors, however, he does in order to convince the reader that the points of these authors, who are in favor of the sugar regulation, are baseless points and not good enough to encourage sugar taxation.
The information is significant because he gave this problem an economic perspective, which is very unusual at this kind of topics. He takes the increase of non -communicable diseases as a rate to measure social welfare and economic growth. Carden also discusses about the high costs that government would have to pay if they decided to tax sweetened products.
However, when he argues about cancer and diabetes as possible rates to measure life expectancy and social welfare, he refers to these diseases as diseases that only attack old people, when the truth is that cancer and diabetes also attack young people as well as children. This fallacy invalidates a bit his first

In spite of all this, sugar taxation is not an option. As Carden explains, each individual is responsible for his own diet, health and body, sugar taxation may work for a while, but when people want something, they get it ,no matter how, where or the cost. So the government would invest a lot of money and other resources to reduce sugar consumption, but at the end people would continue consuming sugar. It would be a waste of time, resources and money. Carden is absolutely right in that point, it may sound a bit selfish, but it is true.
At some point he missed arguing that deaths from non-communicable diseases were not bad, as these could serve as indices of social welfare. This affirmation could have been accepted at the end of the last century or the very beginning of this century, but his article published in 2012 and since there are more effective ways to measure social welfare, this may be one of the few negative point at his article, besides the argument of cancer as a measure of life expectancy, because most people know that cancer is not only an elders disease; it affects every human being, regardless of sex or