This week the gov­er­nor of New York pro­poses an “obe­sity tax” on soft drinks. Good for him! Finan­cial incen­tives for good behav­ior work, and I’m sure the state can use the extra revenue.

Unfor­tu­nately it seems like Gov. Pater­son intends to draw a line between diet and non-diet drinks, choos­ing to tax only non-diet sodas. Mak­ing such a dis­tinc­tion seems to con­vey the mes­sage that diet sodas are some­how health­ier than their non-diet coun­ter­parts. A gov­ern­ment endorse­ment of arti­fi­cial sweet­en­ers like aspar­tame (Nutrasweet) is inap­pro­pri­ate with­out sci­en­tific con­sen­sus. And as of this writ­ing, the sci­ence is inconclusive.

Most peo­ple would agree that soda is unhealthy, so why not tax all soda?