We see evidence of sugar’s devastating health effects every day. Take a close look. Over there it’s rotting a child’s teeth, over there it’s taking a diabetic’s foot, and, hey, over there it’s costing the clinic thousands of dollars to treat preventable conditions. What can we do about it? A great place to start is implementing a single policy that will reduce sugary beverage consumption by 13%, substantially reduce diabetes and obesity, and provide a continuous funding source for community wellness programs. Luckily for us, that policy exists: a sugar-sweetened beverage tax.

Of course, there is a catch. So far, no state, local, or tribal government has been successful in passing legislation to implement this kind of tax. Corporate interests in the beverage industry have spent enormous amounts of money to fight every single attempt to do so. They sent representatives all the way to the Navajo Nation this summer to fight a junk food tax proposal. These companies do not care about the health and wellbeing of impoverished minority populations. Historically marginalized groups make up a huge share of their profits, so they continue to hit us hard with marketing and to distort the truth about the negative consequences of an overly sugary diet.

Still, we have reasons to be optimistic. Communities are not backing down, and the evidence supporting sugar-sweetened beverage tax policies continues to pile up. Tribes are well-positioned to be the first success story in this saga.