{"id":145486,"date":"2010-01-06T11:33:19","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T16:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"tag:business.theatlantic.com,2010:\/\/3.33031"},"modified":"2010-01-06T11:25:28","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T16:25:28","slug":"lessons-from-our-cigarette-policy-for-obesity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/145486","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from Our Cigarette Policy for Obesity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obesity has passed smoking as the country’s biggest health burden<\/a>. This is partly because Americans are getting fatter, and partly because more smokers are quitting. Is it time for the US to have a more serious anti-obesity policy?<\/p>\n

The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, James Fallows and Marc Ambinder debated this very topic last year, and their thoughts are well worth reading.<\/a>
\nTo sum up with criminal briefness: Megan thinks the common
\ninterventions don’t work; Marc thinks good policy starts with the kids;
\nand James basically agrees with Marc.<\/p>\n

I’d like to try a thought experiment. How are we turning the tide
\nagainst the smoking epidemic (smokers have fallen from 22.7 percent of
\nthe population in 1993 to 18.5 percent in 2008)? I can brainstorm three
\nbig fronts against tobacco: (1) new laws (2) new prices and (3)
\nwidespread public relations. In the 1970s we banned TV and radio ads
\nwith cigarettes, and forced cigarettes to print warnings from the
\nsurgeon general. We later banned all tobacco ads in the 1980s. Recently
\nthe federal government forced tobacco companies to print even bigger,
\nscarier-looking warnings on their products. Locally, big cities like
\nChicago and New York have made it hell for smokers to indulge in public
\nspaces, and smokeless apartments and hotel rooms have proliferated
\nthroughout the last thirty years. Meanwhile, many state taxes have
\npushed cigarette prices through the roof, an anti-smoking advocacy
\ngroups have raised hell behind the scenes, waging wars in state
\nlegislatures and Congress, raging against movie studios and ad
\ncompanies and standing behind PSAs.<\/p>\n

Could US obesity policy benefit from a similar three-pronged attack? The overlap is imperfect, but we can still look for analogs. An obesity policy cut from our cigarette-policy mold might include national laws to ax corn subsidies and local incentives
\nas small as tax breaks for companies who provide wellness programs. It
\nmight include national or state taxes on junk food and soda. It might
\ninclude the emergence of obesity groups that offer sympathy for obese
\nAmericans — since obesity has a more significant genetic component
\nthan a smoking addiction, it would be foolish and unfair to merely
\ndemonize them — but also advertises non-faddish methods for fighting
\nobesity with sustainable life choices. Whenever you start thinking
\nabout ways to change American habits, the first step is to accept the
\nreality that it’s very, very difficult. But the fact that cigarette
\nsmoking has fallen about 20 percent in the last 15 years is reason to
\nthink that the effort is not futile.


\n

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Obesity has passed smoking as the country’s biggest health burden. This is partly because Americans are getting fatter, and partly because more smokers are quitting. Is it time for the US to have a more serious anti-obesity policy? The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, James Fallows and Marc Ambinder debated this very topic last year, and their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-145486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}