First, the soda tax hit Berkeley; then, it hit Philly. Now, supporters seek to expand to four other cities, with both sides facing the largest spending to date before voters head to the polls in November.
“Three cities in the Bay Area — San Francisco, Oakland and Albany, Calif[ornia] — are all looking to follow in the footsteps of Berkeley, Calif[ornia]…and Philadelphia, where the city council recently approved a 1.5 cent per ounce fee,” Politico’s Helena Bottemiller Evich reported last week. “Boulder, Colo[rado] is also close to getting its own measure on the city ballot, which means the war could be fought on four fronts.”
The two camps are doing their best to fund their respective campaigns. Boulder’s battle is just beginning, with proponents spending $10,000 versus their rivals with $7,500. Oakland, meanwhile, faces a different set of issues, with advocates paying only three percent of what the beverage industry is spending: $750,000.
But San Francisco is expected to have the greatest amount of expenses this year. Supporters—which include the liberal Action Now Initiative and Michael Bloomberg, according to the article—have currently raised $315,000. Meanwhile, the drink industry has reserved $9.5 million in airtime, and the related “No SF Grocery Tax Campaign” has spent $632,000 so far with three months to go before Election Day.
The soda tax’s history, however, is slightly more complicated.
In 2014, Berkeley became the first American city to adopt the measure, despite being outspent by the other side. Yet when San Francisco had to decide later that year, the soda tax fizzled out as it failed to pass a two-thirds threshold.
Backers at the time said it would make sugary drinks more expensive, thus incentivizing the fight against obesity and other health-related issues. And health advocates like Jim Krieger, Healthy Food America’s executive director, now point to a recent survey in the American Journal of Public Health that says that the law did its job in Berkeley’s low-income areas.
Noting the 63 percent increase in water consumption compared to nearby locales, Krieger said on August 23 that this “study provides another key piece of evidence that sugary drink taxes work….to reduce consumption and shift sales from an unhealthy product to healthier drinks.”
But the study has its limits. On the one hand, the researchers were neither able to determine its effects on local waistlines, nor could they ultimately figure whether the uptick came from the tax or the overall campaign. Furthermore, Brad William, a consultant for the American Beverage Association, told the San Francisco Chronicle that he thought it was unreliable since it did not track the same people or compare their reported consumption with their actual drinking habits.
Opponents also claim that the soda tax is unhelpful in other ways. Joe Arellano, spokesman for the ABA-backed “No SF Grocery Tax” campaign, claimed it would hurt grocers as prices go up. Before Philadelphia instituted its tax in June, there were complaints from local restaurant owners. Other places like Oakland are expected to receive brochures quoting Senator Bernie Sanders, who wrote in Philadelphia this April that he could not support the tax as it “would disproportionately affect low-income and middle-class Americans” instead of taxing the wealthy.
And even the local Teamsters union decided to take legal action against the rule this July. “These taxes are harmful to workers, small grocers and the city’s poor. The tax that the city council passed in Philadelphia will go to fund the city’s pet projects at the expense of our workers and economy,” Daniel Grace, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 830 in Philadelphia, said in a statement.
“We are continuing the fight against this unfair, regressive tax in court,” he continued. “Our fight is not over. They spent years trying to push through this tax that targets one industry over another, and it’s the workers that will suffer as a result. Our city council’s job isn’t to raise revenue on the backs of workers; it’s a disgrace.”
