Dear Sir,

When the sugar tax was introduced with great fanfare, Bermudians were promised a double victory: a healthier population and a government weaponising tax policy to defeat chronic disease. We were told that a punishing 75 per cent import tariff on sweet staples would force a collective shift away from diabetes and obesity.

Instead, nearly a decade later, the data confirms what local shoppers and retailers knew all along. The sugar tax has failed to lower Bermuda’s stubbornly high 75 per cent adult overweight and obesity rate. What it has done, with surgical precision, is systematically drive up the cost of living for everyday families trapped in an already punishing grocery climate.

It is time to call this policy what it truly is: a regressive food tax disguised as public health. It should be repealed immediately.

The fundamental flaw of the sugar tax lies in its naive assumption that taxing a border commodity changes complex human behaviour. Public health evaluations have shown a predictable “substitution effect”. Hard-pressed consumers are not magically swapping soda for expensive, imported out-of-season berries. Instead, they are forced to shift to alternative high-calorie fillers or juices that escape the tax but carry identical glycemic loads.

Healthy eating requires affordability but in keeping baseline food imports artificially inflated, the Government has priced lower-income families out of a nutritious diet.

Furthermore, the moral justification for the tax has completely evaporated. The Ministry of Health routinely defends the 75 per cent tariff by claiming its $6 million to $7 million in annual revenues are “earmarked” for wellness initiatives. Yet a glance at the government Budget Book reveals a glaring case of fiscal smoke and mirrors.

There is no dedicated, ring-fenced health trust. The millions extracted from your checkout receipt disappear directly into Head 15: Customs, dissolving into the generic black hole of the Consolidated Fund. It is used to patch up general government overheads and institutional hospital subsidies, while frontline non-profits such as the Bermuda Diabetes Association are left to beg for private donations to supply low-income patients with life-saving insulin.

Bermudians are paying more at the supermarket, yet individual out-of-pocket costs for diabetic medication and insurance premiums continue to skyrocket.

We must look towards the alternative path forward. Scrapping the sugar tax entirely would deliver direct, immediate financial relief to consumers at the grocery register. True health outcomes are not achieved by punishing the poor at the cash register; they are achieved through proactive, targeted community measures. We must pivot towards structural private-public wellness partnerships, mandatory and robust physical education hours in our public schools, and corporate-sponsored nutrition programmes.

The temporary “Affordable Bermuda Basket” initiative, which recently concluded its run, proved that the cost of food is the single biggest anxiety gripping Bermudian households. If the Government is truly serious about easing the cost-of-living crisis and supporting the health of its citizens, it must stop treating the grocery cart as a cash cow.

The sugar tax does not cure diabetes; it only thins the Bermudian wallet. It is an economic burden without a health benefit, and Parliament must vote to repeal it.

PETER CLARK

Pembroke