Editorial: Popping the bubbles of plan for California soda tax

California's children are too fat, studies say. Their parents are overweight, too.

So the answer is to tax what's making them fat, right? The ice cream and cake from the birthday parties kids are always going to, Snickers and Cheetos, or that white bread Mom and Dad use for baloney sandwiches?

Nope -- apparently, only soda pop and other sugary drinks deserve the fat tax. That is, according to some legislators bubbling up with the latest fad in weight management crossed with fiscal policy. Everything else that adds to the population's avoirdupois shall remain tax-free under the latest plan to get kids fit.

Just as the cities of El Monte and Richmond tried (and failed) to do last fall, the state Legislature is considering a bill that would put a penny-an-ounce levy on sodas.

This is not really about fighting obesity, as the bill by Sen. Bill Monning purports. It's about revenue, pure and simple, and soda is an easy target.

Worse, this is not a healthy way to promote a slender California, picking out one offender among the many fat-causing choices and hitting it hard. Sweetened beverages are only one culprit among the multitude of foods and drinks that cause weight gain. And so-called sin taxes -- tobacco, for instance (that's another bill this year, and another editorial) -- hit poorer people much harder.

Monning says the soda tax would raise $1.7 billion a year. He wants to use the money to promote nutrition education and recreation programs, and to improve the health of school meals. About half would go to information campaigns and the other half to local governments to use in anti-obesity programs.

How absurd it would be to create a new California bureaucracy funded by all that liquid sugar. That effort (not to mention our money) could better go into creating more efficiency in the state agencies that promote health than into creating a soda enforcement squad.

Sadly, two Senate committees like the legislation, SB 622. It now goes to the senate's appropriations committee, where it will likely pass handily before heading to the full senate.

Voters in El Monte and in Richmond properly rejected the soda taxes on their November ballots. So should legislators this summer.

California needs to have healthier children. A soda tax is the wrong way to accomplish that.