ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on policies that aim to reduce obesity by raising the costs of the decisions that cause it. At least when it comes to adults, such policies need ethical justification. The leading attempts to justify them claim that raising costs would be fair, would improve the welfare of their targets, or would be required by social justice, which is just a way of saying that they would improve the welfare of the socioeconomically badly off. I have raised doubt about all of these arguments. The point is not that they are fundamentally flawed. Under some conditions, these arguments could genuinely justify reducing choices. The point is that working through them shows that the arguments rely on certain assumptions, such as that the obese do impose substantial costs on others or that badly off people really would benefit from having fewer options. These assumptions are insufficiently supported to justify anti-obesity tax and regulations.
