Stuff You Should Know - Should we have a fat tax?

Episode Date: June 12, 2012

The concept of fighting unhealthy behavior like overeating by taxing unhealthy food has been around since 1994. But as the debate over a fat tax rages on in the U.S., Europe has begun to institute them and there's talk of taxing overweight people as well. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. This is Josh Clark. Charles W. Chuck Bryant is taking a refreshing sip off of a little craw, brand carbonated soda. And since he's doing that, wearing a plaid short sleeve t-shirt, and I'm wearing jeans, that means that this is Stuff

You Should Know. That's right. Yeah, that's the formula, the secret formula. Jeans on you, plaid shirt on me. Nothing from the waist down on you. That's it. Yeah. Socks, of course, and flip-flop. It makes the whole thing so much more unsettling. I think still there's nothing, there's not much funnier than socks and shoes on with no pants. Yeah, that's a Homer Simpson look. It's always funny. He has nailed it, especially with his pointy little brown shoes. Yeah. The big road ton pubic mound that he has. He's awesome. It's been a long time, hasn't it? I know. It's been weeks. We've been out of the office for two weeks just so people know we're getting back into things and it's refreshing to do our,

to do something that we're good at. Yeah. Yeah, it is. It's nice. It gives me a sense of control. Yes. I feel like we're good at this, Chuck. We know what we're doing, except for maybe the union's one. Man. No. I mean, it was good. All the information was there, but I sounded like I'd had a transorbital lobotomy just moments before we started. I thought it was a good one. Did you? Yeah. I will see. This one is going to be a good one, my friend. You remember the tipping episode? Yes. It's going to make that look like poop. Okay. We're talking today, Chuck, as I know you know about the possibility of a fat tax. That's right. We'll get to exactly what it is in a second, but let's talk about why you would even consider taxing fat. It seems like, Chuck, there is an

obesity epidemic in the United States, and not just the United States, but in the Western world. Yeah. We're not the only fatties, although we are typically the fattiest of the fatties. Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, we're the best in everything. Yeah. By percentage, I think there are more obese people in the States than elsewhere. Yes, but it is still a problem. It's very prevalent everywhere. When you mean I went to Japan, she was like everyone in Japan is so thin. Everyone is very thin. They're very small people. Do you see some fatties? We went and I was like, you sure when's the last time you were here? So yeah, it's everywhere. But they would probably say like, we're just fat now because we're eating American foods. That is what they say.

Because you know what? They're probably right. Dude, their McDonald's makes our McDonald's look again like poop. Yeah. Like they have this thing called the mega muffin. And it's an egg McMuffin with sausage and like extra egg. And it's huge. And it's probably the most delicious thing I've ever eaten in my life. I'll eat a sausage McMuffin with egg right now. And then well, you can get an egg McMuffin with sausage here in the States, if you know what to ask for. Sure. But it costs you like six bucks, but it's worth it. Is that true? But yeah. Anyway, yes. The double egg interests me though. Yeah. Yeah. No, it is true. Like it's six bucks easy. Yeah. Okay. So in the United States,

let's throw out some statistics because this is where we live. And again, the United States is the greatest country in the world when it comes to obese people producing the obese. And obesity costs the US an estimated $150 billion a year. Yeah. In healthcare costs. That's a significant amount of meatballs. Yeah. 22% of all medical costs. And 26% of Medicare costs are during the last year of life or due to obesity. That's a lot of 22%. That's significant. Yeah. I thought that was a weird statistic though, wasn't it? Yeah. I thought it was a lot. That guy that pollster who you're quoting, he was definitely biased. It seemed like it was his own poll. I know. But I'm saying like even still, he was like,

here's this poll that we just conducted and here's how I feel about it. Yeah. So we've got a lot of money being put into treating diseases that arise from obesity. AKA preventable disease. Well, yeah. Obesity is considered a chronic disease, which is something that can be treated and prevented through behavior modification like shock therapy, which costs far less than treating heart disease. That's point one. Let's see the costs are expected to rise. Yeah. And however you feel about Obamacare, take that off the table. Put it on the table, take it off the table. Either way, if we don't change the amount of money we're putting into care for obesity related diseases, those costs are going to go up just because the sheer number of obese people

are expected to rise. Sure. There's something like 72% of Americans are either overweight or obese. Yeah, boy, that's a lot. It is a lot. And it's I think more than a third of Americans are obese. And obese is a body mass index of like 25 to 30, 25 to 30 kilograms per square meter. Yeah. Right. And then they're kind of refining that. So it's not just weight anymore. Right. It's the amount of fat you have on your body. Right. And apparently there's a move toward refining that even further, which is how much fat do you have on your upper body, which is the really unhealthy stuff adipose, right? I know. I can't gain a pound below my waist. I think I'm like my dad. I carried all between my my chin and my waistline. Is that right? Oh yeah, I got skinny little legs.

I don't get like the big butt that some guys get, you know, I've noticed since I've been running my butt has gone up and out a little bit. And I guess that's what's supposed to be. But I don't like it, man. I'm self conscious about my bottom now. Okay, so the the percentage of obese people in the US Chuck is supposed to go from about a third, right 32, 33% it's at now to 42%. Wow. By 2030. That's just not overweight. That's obese creeping up to half the country. Yeah. That's a lot. It's nice to have something to shoot for. So there's a lot of as a nation. There's a lot of reasons that people would start talking about instituting a fat tax. And when we're talking about the fat tax, we're talking about this concept that was first introduced

by a Yale psychologist named Kelly D. Browno. Yeah, the Twinkie tax. I hate that they throw Twinkie on any everything. I always do. Anytime something has to do with junk food, they throw Twinkie on it like the Twinkie defense. Yeah, the word Twinkie was never uttered during the trial. Yeah, during the trial, it was all junk food. That was the Harvey Milk thing, right? Yeah. It was Dan White. Yeah, the Dan White trial. It was no, he never mentioned Twinkie, but that was the press. They just put Twinkie on anything they can't. Yeah, he first coined it, and this was back in 1994 in the New York Times. So it's not the newest idea to be floated. And there are some different ways that people have suggested that we go about this. He has a couple of proposals. One is

taxing 7% to 10% on unhealthy foods and then use that revenue to subsidize healthy foods. To make it cheaper. To make that cheaper, the most expensive. And the idea behind that is what? That people just buy unhealthy food because it's cheaper because it traditionally is. I wonder if we would find out if that's the case. I don't think that's the case. I don't know. I think people buy those foods because they want to buy that junk and eat it. I guess it depends on what you're talking about though. If it's a TV dinner, you're looking for dinner, and that's super cheap, right? True. So if they're healthier alternatives that are cheaper than that, then maybe they would go with the healthier alternative. But when you want an Oreo, you want an Oreo. But I bet you

could get one of the little healthy choice meals for about the same as a TV dinner. Aren't those about the same price? I wonder. I wonder though also if proportion has to do with it too. I think proportion control is a huge portion. Portion control. Yeah. Proportion. It is a proportion. Well, when you're comparing a healthy choice to a hungry man, it's proportion. And the other thing is too though, I mean the healthy choice meals and those diet meals, weight watchers meals, they are lower in I guess like fats and calories and stuff like that. So it'd still be hard to argue that they're healthy. Any kind of package process food like that is inherently not like super healthy. I guess you're right. But it's probably better than the hungry man. Well,

it's like the whole thing with high fructose corn syrup. Like sugar, refined sugar is a healthy comparison to it. You know, like that whole throwback thing that Pepsi did. Right. Like that was supposed to be better for you. But they use just refined sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. So I wonder if what you're saying then is that's along the same lines, I guess. Well, yeah. And that presents one of the problems that we'll get to is how do you, if you're going to do something like this, where do you draw the line and how do you attack this? Is it just sweets and fatty foods or, you know, a pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream is made with really healthy natural ingredients, but it's full of fat and calories. Whereas a healthy choice quote unquote is processed

and loaded with preservatives, but it's lower in calories. So it's hinky. You present a sticky conundrum. How they're going to figure this out if it ever goes through. So that was the first proposal by Brownell. It basically seven to 10% tax. Use that the revenue to fund or subsidize healthier stuff. Right. Yeah. And they can actually, I don't know how they did this, but Oxford University actually put a number value on how many lives a year that could save. Yeah. And they claim that a 17.5% value added tax could save up to 3200 lives a year. And I guess that's probably just in England. I'm imagining, right? I believe so. It seems like England's all over this as well. Yeah, they are. It's a U.S. and England. Well, Europe is kind of moving toward this. But yeah,

the studies that we came across seem to be mostly British in origin. All right. They love their studies every day. They do. So that's one, one proposal. What's the second one? Well, the second one was less aggressive. It was basically just tax a lesser amount onto unhealthy food and then funnel that into public education. And Brownell said that that would probably be easier to get pushed through legislatively, but it would have less of an effect. Yeah. I mean, if you're going to do this and I don't even know if it's a good idea or not, I'd rather see cheaper healthy food than some stupid campaign. The whole awareness campaign, I have doubts about the effectiveness of those things. Well, they have an obesity awareness campaign going on and it's like,

they're using these poor fat kids as models and it's like, what school do you go to? You have to be private tutor now because you're literally the poster child for obesity. So you were saying that the Brits came up with the idea of doing a 17.5 value added, 17.5 percent value added tax, right? Yes. Value added tax is basically like every time a raw material comes into the manufacturing plant, there's a tax on that. Right. When the manufacturer finishes the final product, sends it to a exporter. There's a tax on that. Exporter gives it to a distributor. There's a tax on that. And ultimately, all these taxes build up and are passed on to the consumer, right? The savings aren't passed on. The taxes, the extra payment. So these Brits who

studied that found that if you did that 17.5 percent tax and you just did it on foods with saturated fat, it could actually be counterproductive. They modeled it and they found that it would drive people to other foods. Oh, salty and, yeah. Yeah. And would have even more severe health consequences, right? Interesting. And then what's more, here's a big problem too. It would increase food costs by about 3.2 percent. So here's where we reach a really... So if you're a liberal, right? And you're like, no, we need to look out for people. These people don't understand the consequences of their eating habits and their diet habits. They're passing along to their children. We're all going to die at age 50. So we need this kind of tax. And somebody goes, it's regressive. So

it's unfairly taxing the poor. And every liberal just goes, forget it. Just forget it all. Never get behind it. And that's part of the problem because the poor tend to spend a larger percentage of their income on food. So if you start taxing food, it's going to unfairly hit the poor harder than anybody else. Right. So they found 3.2 percent for that one that's just saturated fat. And they did two other models too. Yeah. The one where they actually assign a score rating to your food. Don't ask me what this stands for, but the SSC G3D score. I looked. I couldn't find what it stands for. Super secret. Let's just call it that. The super secret score. So basically, they're going to rate foods based on eight nutrients and a higher score is bad. If you're a plus eight,

then you're going to get taxed more. Yeah. And that would save 2,300 lives. I guess, is that a year? Yeah. And then increase 4 percent. So even higher increase in food costs. Right. But it saves lives rather than having more severe negative consequences. And it hits that sweet spot that you were looking for at the science. Right. So like you could run anything conceivably through this algorithm and it doesn't. It's blind to whether it's lean cuisine or ho-hos. Right. It's going to spit out a score and depending on the score, you get taxed or not. That makes a little more sense. It does. Still though, 4 percent increase in food costs. That's significant. It is. And then the third one was where basically it was they spread the tax among a bunch of different

foods, almost half of all foods. All unhealthy though. I don't know. I don't understand. Yeah, I didn't get this one. Okay. So, but what we did, what they found was that it saves lives, but it increases taxes by about 4.6 percent. So if you're an anglophile and you are into studies and you like choosing multiply, you would probably go with number two, I think. It makes the most sense to me and you. Right. And it should to everyone else. Well, it's just describing ourselves. Okay. Actually, in Britain, they already do this on some things like ice cream and potato chips they mentioned in here. Already have a value added tax and in some states, I know George is not one of them, they tax small taxes on soft drinks and things like that. See, I don't know if that's true,

because I found this one article about Redmond, California, where they're talking about adding a one cent per ounce soda tax. And it says that they would be the first city in the country to actually push it through. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, it does say California and Maine and Maryland had fat taxes approved and then repealed. So, yeah, first city in the nation to levy a tax, specifically targeting soda and sugar laden beverages. Interesting. All right. So, but if this goes through, it's coming up pretty soon, I guess in November. But if it goes through, there's that one problem again, where it's a regressive tax, right? Because it's a fixed amount. It's one cent per ounce. And because of that, the cheaper the value of an ounce of soda,

yeah, the more percentage you're going to pay in taxes, right? So let's say you pay a dollar for your generic store brand, two liter, right, that's 66 or 67 ounces, you're going to pay at a cent per ounce, you're going to pay an extra 67 cents. Yeah, which is 60% more cost. Yeah, it's almost double what you were paying before. And the people who are buying that dollar store brand two liter are probably people who can afford the dollar two liter. Right, exactly. Now, if you do a 12 pack or something like that, right? And it's 144 ounces, but a 12 packs already like six bucks, right? That's only an extra $1.44. That's only like 20% or something like that. Yeah, added tax rather than 60. So that's why they say regressive taxes

are usually unfairly burdening to the poor. Yeah, that makes sense. I see. Well, I see it all the time. Let's just say that you do. I used to work in the convenience store. So I had a good eye on who was buying what and what kind of snacks people ate and stuff like that. Yeah, I was amazed to find when I worked in a gas station that people chew white clay. Excuse me, they chew white clay. I don't know what that means. You've not seen white clay? No, look around next time you're in a gas station, especially out in the sticks. Okay, there'll be a little cellophane bag with like the little paper hanger, you know, like you buy like gummy worms or whatever in. Yeah, like that. But it's a food. It is not a food item.

It's clay and people chew it. Apparently it's never heard. It's like a folk tradition among pregnant women to chew clay, but people have like this kind of craving for it as well. And they sell this in convenience store. Yeah, I never knew that. Yeah, that one always blew me away. That's a good one. I'm going to be able to look out now. Okay. So we've talked about all the reasons why you should do this, right? Yes. It seems like this would have all been pushed through if there weren't some sort of opposition to the concept of fat taxes like Tony Blair. Oh yeah. For instance, in 2004, he called it a sign of a nanny state. And basically that kind of sums it up. Critics will argue that, you know, this is like the government once again, legislating something in your personal

decision you want to make, which is, you know what, if I want to eat Twinkies and get fat and die of a heart attack at 40, it's my right. Yeah. Because I love those Twinkies. It makes a really good case. Yeah. Like who is the government to tell you you shouldn't? Right. There is a really good argument on the other side that often comes from the same side though, which is if we as a society have to pay for your health care, right, then yeah, we do have a stake in telling you, you know, you can't eat that Twinkie. And yeah, we agree, we can't tell you not to eat that Twinkie, but we can make you think twice about it by raising the price of it. Well, and therein brings up the third model, which is not to tax food, but to make people pay more for something like insurance,

if they're obese, to tax the person and not the item. Yeah. Yeah. Which is probably the more diabolical model of the others. Yeah, but it's also like I get that, but it's also at least it singles out the problem. Like although some people might say the problem is the existence of the Twinkie, but they don't, but the critics will say no, but you know, what if you're super healthy and you like to indulge in a Twinkie every now and then? There is nothing wrong with the existence of Twinkie check. That was hypothetical, right? You know what I'm saying? Okay. But like you can't like, if you levy this tax on junk food and I'm a marathon runner that once a week, I love my Reese's Cup. Right. Why should I have to pay more money on that? Because

a larger person eats them five times a day. See, I disagree with that though, because think about it, man. Like who's really paying for that extra tax? Todd, the larger person who eats them eight times a day or you who eats them once a week. It's like buck up and pay the extra 40 cents and shut up. We're trying to deal with something over here. Go run your marathon. That's what I had to say to that person. As far as it goes within the obese person, when you are faced with that idea of having to pay more for that Reese's, there's no sweet spot. As bad as economists want to be able to say, this is the point where everyone will stop paying for Reese's and stop eating them. It's the same with gas. No one has any idea. You can take the average of all this, but it's

really different for everybody. That's one of the big challenges is how much do you raise. If you take away the idea that that's going to change behavior, it might not. It might just mean that people are going to have to shell out more money, which sucks. What happened with smoking? Did people smoke less when they started taxing the credit out of it? Yes. They did. It's a really good example of how you can successfully tax unhealthy stuff and change people's behavior. So that worked? It did work, but think about what a pack of cigarettes cost today compared to 10 years ago. I think in, say, New York, it's probably about 12 times more than before. I know almost overnight after the tobacco settlement in 1998 was settled, tobacco prices doubled

just from the added tax, but tobacco use went down 25% from 95% to 2007. Is that due to the price or do they know that? It is. They believe it's due to the price. It's probably also due to public education, but really, they were educating the public before then anyway. So yes, they think that it has to do with the fact that the tobacco settlement led to just ridiculously higher taxes and still continues to. So you can say that there's a model that, okay, if you just keep adding more and more and more money in the form of a tax to this item, eventually everybody's going to fall off. You will reach that point where no one will pay that any longer. What we were talking about where you're actually taxing the consumer, that's different.

That's saying whether you eat terribly or not until you get down to a certain, what, body mass index or whatever, you have to pay more for health insurance. I almost feel like it should be the other way around, like car insurance, like you get breaks if you're a good driver. Like maybe if set up incentive plans, if you lose weight, then you get lower costs. Right. Be nice to lower costs for a change. It would be, but it's ultimately the same thing. It's just a different way of looking at it. The people who aren't losing weight are paying more than other people, but I see you saying it's starting out at a level and then people who are better at something, who do well, pay less. It seems fair.

There's some problems. How do you keep track of that? Keep track of the individual? Yeah. I mean, how often do you have to, like if you lose a significant amount of weight, do you go in and say, hey, I need a letter from you saying like I can get a reduction in my insurance now because I've hit this goal or whatever? Sure. Run it through your doctor and have a standardized form where they take certain measurements and if you want to apply and get the cheaper rates, then it's up to you to get those sheets filled out and turn them in every six months. I think you may have just solved a big problem that makes sense to me. Well, in Japan, they're doing something like that. It's called

the Metabo program, where every year everybody goes in for an annual checkup anyway and they do it through their employer, but they added some sort of like body mass index measurement now too. You know, there's like for the person, there's no financial stake in losing weight or hitting a target weight, but there's a lot of societal and peer pressure from their employer who's getting pressured from their city or county or town, which is getting hit financially for X number of people that are not losing weight. So they're using like this societal pressure to pressure people because the Japanese know shame. Well, see, that would work for me because I'm overweight and I guarantee you if every time they rang up something, if a little speaker at

the register went, fat tax, fat tax, I would like stop buying those things or I would find out a way to get them on the black market. Well, I think a lot of people would for sure. Yeah, that would shame me. That's what they should do. I'm amending my previous statement. They should have a computer voice that yells out fat tax every time you buy something fatty. Why not just combine both of those? Sure. Let's combine both because then I think you have a powerhouse model. The Chuck plant and this is coming from the guy who's like 35 pounds overweight. Yeah. Sometimes we have the best ideas. I can tell you those seeing like on a like a restaurant's menu board, seeing the calories next to it, that definitely has an effect on my behavior for sure. Apparently it doesn't put

stuff anyway, so it's not like. But seeing it like, wow, that's really 900 calories. I don't feel like that right now. Yeah, I guess so. It does it for me. I guess I'm never fooling myself into thinking that fried chicken doesn't have that many calories, but maybe seeing it. Yeah, I get to see what you mean. Yeah, I guess if I think about it, I'm like, well, yeah, fried chicken has that many calories, but it's more like. And it makes you think about it if you see it. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So what do Americans think if you believe this poll? One in three believe that obese people should pay more taxes than healthy weight people. Yeah. And this is conducted by the phalanx investment partners LLC. And boy, he's got a lot of, he asked a lot of questions in here.

He did. He's got a lot of stats. He does find it interesting in 92 that the obese could garner support by 40% of Americans where 75% are overweight. So what that means is 35% of overweight people are even saying yes. Like they should be taxed or they should pay more for healthcare. It makes sense. He used the terrible, terrible analogy. Should we allow short-sighted or near-sighted people to become lion tamers? And he was basically comparing that. But that kind of brings up a larger question. Like is this habit, is it just poor habits and poor eating behavior, eating patterns? Yeah. And if so, then yeah, this guy can make a pretty good case that yeah, we need to break people's bad eating habits, especially if they're passing them

along to their kids. Sure. Well, interestingly, younger people responded generally more in favor of taxing food more than older adults and people of higher income responded more positively to a fat tax quote unquote. Yeah. Then yeah, obviously people with a lower income. So yeah, hold some weight. Terrible. That was terrible. I didn't mean that like that. So this is all kind of theoretical right here. I mean, what Richmond, California might have a one cent soda tax, but they'd be the only city with that. Right. Other places have tried it. New York tried the same thing. But apparently the soda companies shouted it down as a naked money grab cleverly disguised as a health policy. That's sad. Yeah. It sucks from lobbyists get their meat hooks and stuff. Say

things like money grab. But if you go to Hungary or Denmark, Hungary is it's awesome that they have a fat tax because of the country's name. But if you go to Hungary or Denmark, there are fat taxes instituted there. Yeah. Hungary has one that's like a flat 30.37 Euro tax on anything that's unhealthy. Yeah. And I'm not quite sure what the parameters are. But basically junk food, what we consider here. And then Denmark just instituted something to where they tax saturated fats in foods to the tune of like 16 Kroner a kilogram, which comes out to be like $1.29 a pound. Wow. And then divide it up. And they take into account not just what ends up in the end result of the fat, but how much fat is also put in and maybe lost along the way. Interesting.

So they're really going after it. Yeah. I like the companies that incentivize like our own Discovery Channel will pay for half of your stomach stapling gym membership. Oh, yeah. Which is great. Like make a little cheaper to join the gym. Can't make you go to the gym. But you feel like a sucker when you're paying to go to the gym and don't go to the gym. I forgot that they'll do that. I need to take them up on that. Oh, yeah, dude. It's once you just miss the deadline, but it's a man once per quarter. 50% of your gym membership for you and you me. Really? Yeah. Well, that's great. I totally forgot about that. And it's not the most money in the world, but a few shekels makes you feel good. Yeah. Yeah, I will definitely take them up.

And thank you for reminding me. I will. Next time my reminder pops up, I'll remind you how about that. I'll go start it today. Okay. Let's see. But yes, please do remind me just because it'll make me feel good that you remembered. I guess that's about it. Fat taxes. They're all over the place in Europe. They're spreading their way west. Yeah. Maybe. Let's see. If you want to learn more about the proposals for the fat tax, you can type in fat tax in the search bar at howstopworks.com. That will bring up an article written by Jeopardy winner Jacob Silverman. Yeah. Yeah. Go Jacob. I watched all three of those shows. He won twice. He won three times. Did he realize that there should be four, right? Well, he's coming back. They had to suspend for

like they do like the tournament or something. So he'll be back at some point to continue his run. That is awesome. Yeah. And I never even knew the guy, but he was really nice to me when I first got hired. Like we emailed me a bunch and kind of like helped me out early on. And then I saw him on TV. I was like, so that's what Jacob Silverman looks like. Oh, you never saw him. I never even saw him. Oh yeah. He's a neat guy. Yeah. Well, congratulations, Jacob. Also, if you want to learn about BDD, you can type that into the search bar and that'll bring up an article by MEE. And I said search bar in there somewhere, which means it's time for listener mail. So Chuck, sorry. I know that normally we should be doing listener mail here,

but let's let's tell everybody something. Okay. So iTunes was cool enough to say, hey guys, what edutainment podcast is your favorite? Edutainment, you say? They put in quotes. And they there's us. There's competition stiff, dude. Us, Ted Talks, Discovery News, Freakonomics, Radio Lab, Radio Lab, Radio Lab, dude, we're up against Radio Lab right now. Yeah. Is that all of them? I don't want to leave anybody out. They're all very great podcasts. Yeah, I can't remember. But yeah, we're up against some heavy hitters. So we are. So they created a poll on the iTunes Facebook page. So you can go to iTunes on Facebook. And if you look on their wall and go down, let's see, I don't know, a few posts, you're going to see that that, you know,

what edutainment podcasts do you like the most, right? You can go vote for us if you want. Indeed. That would be very nice. We think that would be sweet. If you did, if not, it's cool. We're listening anyway. We know you like us. We won't extort anything from you. But if you're having trouble finding it, here's the URL. HTTPS colon slash slash www.facebook.com. You should probably go get a pin. Wait, is that in the URL? No. Okay. Slash questions. That's plural. Slash one, zero, one, five, one, zero, one, five, zero, seven, one, two, four, five, eight, zero, three, slash. That's right. And you can go vote for us. If you want to vote for us, you can also go vote for Ted Talk. You can vote for whoever you want. But we just think it was a nice thing that they did.

Yeah. And we'd love to be featured. Oh, yeah. We left that part out. Whoever wins gets featured on the iTunes homepage on June 25th. Anyway, go check it out. And if you're, if you're unfamiliar with iTunes, check that out too. Josh, I'm going to call this pediatrician follow up with Marinal. Remember in our medical marijuana podcast, we talked about the synthetic pill, Marinal. Right. That you can get a prescription for. Sure. Guys, I'm a huge fan and I even followed and said hi to Josh once in Macy's at Lenox Mall. Ring a bell? No. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yes. You know this guy? I remember that guy. Yeah. Jimmy, Jimmy the doctor. I didn't realize Jimmy was a pediatrician. He is. Oh, by the way, I had a fan encounter at the grocery store

without my tooth in the other day. No way. Yeah. Did you take a picture? No, I like, I don't think you noticed, but I think I came across as odd because I was acting real funny, because I didn't have my tooth in. He probably thinks you have a drug habit. I didn't want to smile real big. So I was kind of like, oh, nice to meet you. Anyway, I'm a huge fan from Jimmy. And I was particularly interested in Chuck's hesitancy in saying he had taken a Marinal pill before since it's a legitimate prescription drug. While one doesn't normally associate medical marijuana with the under 18 year old crowd, the use of Marinal is not uncommon actually in our pediatric oncology patients undergoing chemotherapy. We use it as a second or third

line of anti nausea drug. However, in children who are unresponsive to those medications, Marinal is safe and often a highly effective alternative. That being said, you'd be surprised at the number of parents who are hesitant or who even blatantly refuse to allow their child to take Marinal because of the stigma associated with it being quote from marijuana. This normally leads into a conversation describing the fact that many of our medicines are created based off of street drugs. Like you guys mentioned, the derivation of the very commonly used morphine from heroin, I'd say 50 to 60% of the time, we can convince the parent to allow us to help their child. However, again, it's certainly not uncommon for them to refuse. It's incredibly frustrating.

Let me tell you, especially when a child is clearly suffering because of their parents hardheadedness, but we ultimately have to respect their opinions and their wishes. Dr. House doesn't house. He doesn't respect anybody's opinions or wishes. He just hammers through the best treatment he can think of. Just thought you guys may find that aspect of the social stigma associated with Marinal interesting. Thanks for doing the topic. It's one that comes up frequently in my circles. And that is Dr. Jimmy. Thanks, Dr. Jimmy. I totally remember you. That was nice. That made my day that long time. Yumi was very impressed. Oh, really? Yeah. And let's see. If you have an opinion on the fat tax, I'm sure there are plenty. I'm pretty sure we

would get them even without asking, but let's go ahead and ask. Make sure everybody feels comfortable telling us what they think. Be nice, but we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. We're on Facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And you can email us at stuffpodcasts at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit housestuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off the cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being

robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. The world of chocolate has been turned upside down. A very unusual situation. You saw the stacks of cash in our office. Chocolate comes from the cacao tree and recently varieties of cacao thought to have been lost centuries ago were rediscovered in the Amazon. There is no chocolate on earth like this. Now some chocolate makers are racing deep into the jungle to find the next game changing chocolate and I'm coming along. Okay, that was a very large crocodile. Listen to obsessions of wild chocolate on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.