That's the thing though - when you start to rely for revenue on a product that you ideally want to discourage, you end up with an unfortunate side-effect...
(Not that I oppose these laws, although granted I haven't seen enough evidence for full frontal support).
Seems like the tax started out high enough that they are killing the product straightaway rather than coming to rely on the tax for revenue. Though it baffles me that apparently they thought the price of soda wouldn't go up. What was the point if not to cause the price of soda to go up?
Oh, and reformed alcoholics. I forgot about reformed alcoholics. They drink soda too.
Forgive the hyperbole in this thread, but I can't help finding it amusing how easily triggered people are by this issue. Sugary drinks - including most alcoholic beverages - are a serious public health problem in the United States and just one of many examples of how our culture is completely unable to tell people that it is bad to indulge too much in certain things because they hurt other people or our future selves.
Why single out drinks as being bad? Processed food is bad for you, McDonald's food is bad and all those other fast food places, and so many other things that you buy in the store are simply crap. So why single out soda?
Plainly, because it's an easier target. You can't go after all of these things with the same laws, and going after the low-hanging fruit that are easier to deal with doesn't mean the harder tasks go undone. They just require more nuance. It's a lot harder to tax or otherwise attack "fast food" or "processed food" because the definition of those things is much more complicated than "beverage with more than X sugar per ounce". That doesn't make attacking soda and juice a bad decision.
