Unlike cigarette taxes, where there is no benefit whatsoever from smoking and harm from even small amounts of cigarette smoke, sugar is, quite simply, energy for the body and, if taken in the right amounts, helpful to the body's proper functioning. A tax on fats is even more ridiculous, as the notion that "eating fat makes you fat" has been so thoroughly disproven as to be laughable. Fats, proteins and carbohydrates (i.e., sugars) are all needed for our bodies to properly function.

If these substances are abused by some, that is their own problem. Of course, this is one reason why I have issues with the entire socialized medicine concept, because it gives the government reason to stick its nose into people's eating habits. That aside, however, the solution would seem to me to be a surtax on the obese.