A coalition of public health and community advocacy groups, including the Howard County-based Horizon Foundation, wants Maryland legislators to eliminate the state's sales tax on bottled water and to require restaurants to offer healthier drink options as part of their kids' meal menus.
The group, Sugar Free Kids Maryland, made the announcement Monday, at the same time as it released poll results indicating both proposals had broad support from Maryland voters.
The proposals are the latest effort by groups at the county and state level to limit sugary drink consumption, based on research that suggests sodas and other high-calorie beverages are big contributors to growing rates of childhood obesity and diabetes.
"Kids are now being diagnosed with previously adult diseases, and because of this we have gotten to the point where, without change, this generation of youth will not live as long as their parents," said Robi Rawl, executive director of Sugar Free Kids.
"We know that a child who drinks one eight-ounce sugary, sweetened beverage a day is 60 percent more likely to become overweight or obese and 30 percent more likely to develop type II diabetes than a child who does not consume these beverages," said Dr. Brian Avin, the immediate past president of MedChi, the Maryland State Medical Society. "The goal of physicians is to prevent disease rather than treat diseases that are preventable."
Nikki Highsmith Vernick, president and CEO of the Horizon Foundation, which has led the charge for healthier drink options in Howard County for several years, pointed to a statistic that a third of Maryland children are overweight or obese.
"This is unacceptable," Highsmith Vernick said. To help solve what she and others have called a public health crisis, "the healthy choice should always be the easy choice."
According to the poll commissioned by Sugar Free Kids, a majority of voters throughout the state and across party lines would support the coalition's proposed measures. Per the results, 78 percent of the 801 registered voters surveyed said they would support removing the sales tax from bottled water, while 67 percent said requiring healthier drink options on kids' menus was a good idea. Among the parents who participated in the poll, three-quarters said they were in support of the kids' menu proposal.
This is the second year that Sugar Free Kids, a coalition that includes Horizon Foundation as well as MedChi; the American Heart Association; the NAACP and the Maryland Association of Student Councils, has suggested legislation at the state level.
Last session, the group successfully pushed for the passage of a bill that raised nutrition standards for the state's childcare centers. It also promoted a bill, which failed to leave the House's economic matters committee, that would have limited the beverage options for a specially priced children's meal to bottled water and low-fat milk.
In testimony from last year, the Restaurant Association of Maryland pushed back against the children's meal limitations, arguing that "it unnecessarily interferes with how our industry packages, prices and sells children's meal options.
"Contrary to what this legislation suggests, restaurant children's meals are not solely to blame for childhood obesity," Melvin R. Thompson, senior vice president of government affairs and public policy for the restaurant association, wrote to the committee. "A lack of physical activity, as children today spend more time online or playing video games and less engaged in physical activity, has been a significant contributor."
Monday, Thompson said he would have to wait to see the language of the new proposals from Sugar Free Kids before he could comment.
Ellen Valentino, a lobbyist for the Maryland/Delaware/D.C. Beverage Association, said she hadn't seen the legislation either, although she criticized any "new government mandate on small businesses," saying the beverage association favored a "holistic approach" to fighting obesity.
"What we've heard from parents and moms is they want choices, and the good news is the beverage industry is providing a whole host of choices," Valentino said.
On a national scale, the American Beverage Association addressed the issue of obesity in September by announcing a campaign to reduce calories from beverages consumed per person by 20 percent nationwide by 2025. The initiative is a partnership with the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which was created by the American Heart Association and the Clinton Foundation.
In Howard, County Executive Allan Kittleman, a Republican, announced earlier this month that he had repealed a controversial executive order signed in 2012 by former County Executive Ken Ulman, a Democrat, that banned the sale of sugary drinks and high-calorie snacks on county property and at county-sponsored events.
Kittleman said the executive order had "overstepped" an "appropriate role" for government, and argued that the county should focus on education rather than government regulation in the fight against obesity.
The Horizon Foundation had supported the executive order, and responded to Kittleman's decision by arguing that "education alone -- without other community and environmental changes -- does not align with proven public health research."
