http://www.ahealthblog.com/soda-tax-prevent-26000-deaths-year.html

A Soda Tax Could Prevent 26,000 Deaths Each Year

A team of researchers have looked at the impact of a nationwide soda tax on sugary beverages.
Each year, people in America consume 13.8 billion gallons of sports drinks, soda, sweet tea, fruit punch as well as other sweetened drinks, a mass intake of sugar that’s fueling increasing diabetes and obesity rates in the U. S. The quantity of sugar in a regular 22-oz sweet beverage is 17 teaspoons, which equates to an average sum of 70,000 calories which the average American citizen takes in each year in sweetened drinks.
The researchers estimate that putting a penny-per-ounce soda tax on sweetened drinks could prevent almost 8,000 strokes, 100,000 instances of heart disease, as well as 26,000 deaths each year.
The researchers also estimate that  240,000 instances of diabetes could be prevented each year. There are 25,800,000 Americans that have diabetes, 8.3 % of the U.S. population is affected