Soda Tax Succeeds In Berkeley, Fizzles In San Francisco
By Lisa Aliferis, KQED
November 5, 2014 - Kaiser Health News
Voters in Berkeley, Calif., have passed the nationfs first soda tax with a
resounding 75 percent of the vote. The measure aims to reduce the effects of
sugar consumption on health, especially increased rates of obesity and
diabetes.
Across the bay in San Francisco, however, a similar proposal failed to get
the two-thirds supermajority it needed.
More than 30 cities and states across the country have attempted but failed
to enact such a tax, at least in part because of well-funded opposition from the
soda industry.
Berkeleyfs Measure D needed only a simple majority to pass. It will levy a
penny-per-ounce tax on most sugar-sweetened beverages and is estimated to raise
more than $1 million per year. Proceeds will go to the general fund; Measure D
calls for the creation of a health panel to advise Berkeleyfs City Council on
appropriate health programs to receive funding.
Campaign Co-Chair Josh Daniels called Berkeleyfs win a tipping point. gI
think you will now see many, many other cities and communities around the
country looking at this as a genuine public policy to address the diabetes and
obesity crisis that we face,h he said.
While the San Francisco proposition did not pass, supporters there declared a
victory of their own: More than half the voters approved the tax despite
millions spent by the American Beverage Association to defeat it.
gSo the fact that we were able to overcome $10 million,h said Proposition E
coauthor Scott Wiener, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, gand
it looks like a majority of San Franciscans – despite that $10 million – will
vote eyes,f is pretty extraordinary.h
The opposition campaigns, funded primarily by the beverage association,
argued that the measures were riddled with loopholes and wouldnft accomplish
their health goals. Roger Salazar, a spokesman for the campaigns, pointed to the
30 failed measures from around the country and called Berkeley gan anomaly.h He
said that to expect to pass such a tax elsewhere in California was
gfoolhardy.h
Advocates are convinced hefs wrong. Harold Goldstein, executive director of
the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, called the measurefs passage
gremarkable.h
gWhat we learned here in Berkeley,h he said, gis that when voters learn the
truth about sugary beverages, when they learn that they are one of the central
causes of the growing diabetes epidemic, they want to tax it, they want to
regulate these products.h
Sodas are the primary source of added sugar in the American diet and that
added sugar is linked to increasing rates of diabetes.
Berkeley has a history of being first to a new cause thatfs later embraced
more broadly, said Lori Dorfman, executive director for the Berkeley Media
Studies Group. gIn the mid-70s, Berkeley made the first ecurb cut,f and now
people in wheelchairs all over the country are not trapped in their homes
anymore.h She noted that Berkeley was also the first city to pass a clean indoor
air ordinance.
Mexico enacted a national soda tax on January 1, and by summer, consumption
had dropped 10 percent.
Kelly Brownell, dean of Duke Universityfs school of public policy first proposed a soda tax in the early 1990s. He called the
votes in both Berkeley and San Francisco ghistorich and, like other advocates,
predicted other cities will soon follow suit and that soda companies are bracing
for that.
gMy guess is that inside their boardrooms, they know very well these taxes
are the beginning of the future,h he said. gThis is a wave starting to
crest.h
Brownell said that half the costs of diabetes and obesity are born by
taxpayers, through government health insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid.
Those public costs gjustify the government getting involved, just like tobacco
taxes,h he said.
This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes KQED,
NPR and Kaiser Health News.