JAMAICA is finally moving on a question it has avoided for too long: How should the State protect consumers in a food environment that produces illness at scale? The new sweetened drink tax is part of the answer. But it is not the whole answer. If the Government is serious about consumer protection, it must also move on clear front-of-package warning labels and resist efforts to reduce the debate to prices alone.

For years, too much of the discussion has been trapped in the wrong frame. We keep getting pulled back to the same familiar noise about State overreach, burdens on business and hardship for the poor, as if the only thing that matters is whether unhealthy products remain cheap and easy to sell. But that is far too narrow.

Consumer protection means giving people clear information and creating conditions in which healthier choices are easier to make.

That is why the Government is right to move on sweetened drink taxes. The tax signals a willingness to govern the food environment rather than leaving public health to willpower and wishful thinking.

But taxes are part of the journey. They are not the horizon. A tax can nudge behaviour and make unhealthy products less cheap and less attractive. That matters. But as public health experts have shown, a tax cannot do the whole job.

That is where front-of-package warning labels come in. People should not need a microscope, a chemistry degree or 10 spare minutes in the supermarket aisle to work out whether a product is high in sugar, salt, or unhealthy fats. That information should meet them on the front of the pack, clearly and honestly. A warning label makes choice more real by making risk visible before purchase, not after. That is what real consumer protection looks like.

Choice is not meaningful when the conditions of choice are rigged. A shopper is not free in any serious sense when unhealthy products are aggressively marketed, attractively packaged, and made cheap enough to become everyday staples, while the health risks are hidden in fine print.

We also need to stop pretending that every time industry repeats an old talking point, the country must stop and rehearse the same debate from scratch. We already know enough. The science is strong. Local studies have already pushed back against much of the industry case. The question now is not whether Jamaica has enough evidence to act but whether it has the nerve to do so.

And the hand-wringing about poor people needs a little more honesty, too. The issue was never whether a tax has any regressive effect at all but how regressive it is, how it is designed, and what public good it serves. Right now, poorer Jamaicans already carry the heaviest burden of diet-related disease. They are paying for this broken food system every day with their health. There is nothing fair about that.

The food industry should recognise what is coming. Consumers are more health-conscious than they were a decade ago. Governments are under greater pressure to act. The wider world is moving toward clearer warnings and stronger regulation. Companies can adapt to that reality and compete within it, or they can keep defending an old model built on confusion, delay and polished indignation.

Jamaica should choose the future. World Consumer Rights Day, celebrated today, March 15, is a good moment to say it plainly. Taxes matter. But warnings are the democratic minimum. Put it on the front of the pack and let people see the truth before they buy.

SJ LAKE.

SJ Lake is a global health lawyer & scholar. E-mail shajoelake@gmail.com.