Since launching the campaign for a tax on sugary soft drinks in Australia last week, the pushback has been interesting to view from my social dashboard.

I’m used to pushback, it’s almost to be expected when your business encourages people to cut back on a highly addictive, emotionally seductive, economically explosive substance that they rather like the taste of: sugar.

But the cries that by calling for a sugar tax I’m pushing a “tax on the poor” particularly intrigues me. Mostly because I know where they come from – Big Soda’s songsheet.

I’m now familiar with their full aria. It goes like this.

Yeah, OK, we admit soft drink is not that great for you.

Big Soda likes to say this a bit. It’s a great tactic. This conglomeration of vested interests that regularly release illicitly sponsored studies that exonerate their products then, next breath, trawl out the “everything in moderation” argument. They suggest we can drink their cans of fizzy water with 10 teaspoons of added sugar, but we really need to be burning off those calories with a good run or bike ride. Calories in, calories out, people!

Which would be a super argument if there were a skerrick of science to it. The body doesn’t work this way. We’re a little more complex. Indeed, we are consuming no more calories than we did 70 years ago, doing more exercise, and yet obesity has skyrocketed. Um, at the same rate as our sugar consumption.

No matter. Their equation is lovely and simple and it sticks with the public, especially when they throw hundreds of millions at “educating” us on it, via vested studies that are illicitly funded. Yes, they call it education.

(No surprise, then, that we hear “you should be spending your energy on education, not taxes” on the online forums. Same songsheet.)

Next, Big Soda like to push the “personal responsibility” line.

Says Coca-Cola’s CEO: “Americans need to be more active and take greater responsibility for their diets.” The American Beverage Association has said similar.

But again, zilch science. The specifics of sugar’s impact on our health are such that we can’t do “self-control”. It’s addictive and it’s the only food molecule on the planet that switches off our appetite hormones. That is, we have no “off switch” for sugar. Why so? Back when we had to hunt down our calories, and sugar was a scarcity (a few bitter berries and beehives here and there), it made sense to have a unique capacity to binge on it because, wait for it, sugar is the best source of fat on the planet.

It also made sense to not burn off these sugar calories in their sourcing. That would just be silly. Ergo, so is the “you just need to go for a jog” argument.

Plus, sugar is now force-fed to us by the food industry. More than 80% of products in supermarkets contain (mostly) hidden, added sugar. Which is my point.

Most Australians have no choice about how much sugar they eat because they don’t even know they’re eating it. Once addicted to the stuff, they have no choice in being able to eat it moderately.

There is absolutely no personal responsibility argument when there’s no choice.

We’re also warned by the personal responsibly proponents that taxes like this are a tax on the poor. A confounding line to take. But then desperate times …

Sure, more poor folk drink Coke. Of course, Big Soda knows this; they throw most of their sugar advertising revenue at poor areas. The simple equation would be you drink more fizzy sugar water, you pay more tax (assuming Big Soda on-passes the tax to consumers).

But the science shows the burden of a sugar tax on consumers is “almost negligible”. A senior research fellow at Monash University Centre for Health Economics told journalists last week: “Low-income individuals would reduce consumption the most and they would be the most to benefit in terms of weight reduction.”

A coalition of Australian scientists and stakeholders, including Deakin University, the University of Queensland and the Cancer Council, last week drew on science to show that an Australian sugar tax would prevent 4,400 heart attacks and 1,100 strokes, and save the health care system $609m over 25 years.

Sugar is the new tobacco. For every 10% increase in the price of cigarettes, we see a 4% decrease in consumption. Mexico implemented a 10% “soda tax” in 2014; in just one year consumption had decreased by 12%.

Granted, consumers might switch to sugary flavoured milks and fruit juices (most of which are owned by the Big Soda giants and contain just as much added sugar as soft drinks). But a soda tax could lead to a broader sugar tax. Or other initiatives.

It’s a start. And when you consider that Australian kids get almost 30% of their sugar from soft drinks, that they consume on average 1.2 cans a day, and that up to half of our kids are overweight or obese, well, it’s a very good start.

And in the process we have a conversation. I call this education.

The UK government recently announced their sugar tax on sugary drinks. Mexico, France and Hungary have one. These governments saw through the personal responsibility palaver.

When I put our completed petition to Scott Morrison in coming weeks I’ll be flagging this with him. And reminding him of Malcolm Turnbull’s oft-said line, “If you want people to do less of something, you put up the tax.”

To sign the petition, visit Change.org/sugartaxau.