Lobby groups call on government to double sugar tax to fight ill-health
ABBEY MAKOE A group of prominent economic, medical and public health scholars made an impassioned plea to both the South African National Treasury and the SA Revenue Services (SARS), in a rare open letter published in the mainstream media, to double the “sugar tax”. In the widely debated letter since then, the society’s brightest minds – evidently concerned about the impact and contribution of sugar particularly in beverages, made a case for the relevant authorities to double SA’s health promotion levy, commonly known as the “sugar tax”. The full-page advertisement has created a national dialogue over the effects of sugar…