Voters in San Francisco will decide on Nov. 8 whether to put a 1-cent-an-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages and to join neighboring Berkeley and Philadelphia as soda-tax cities. It would be the second ballot in two years on a soda tax in San Francisco with the new proposal having an easier path to passage.
The referendum will need only a simple majority for passage. It is estimated to raise $24 million. Backers intend for the money, guided by an advisory board, to go to health education, physical activity programs and water-bottle filling stations. A proposed 2-cent soda tax netted 56 percent of the vote in 2014 but it needed a two-thirds majority because tax revenue was dedicated to nutrition and health activities.
“Our city is facing an epidemic of health problems directly attributable to sugary-sweetened beverages and we can no long sit back and do nothing,” said Supervisor Malia Cohen, a sponsor of the soda tax. “We know the beverage industry will spend millions of dollars to say that a 10-cent increase in the price of a can of soda will force people out of their homes. This is as ludicrous as their claims that the soda tax is a grocery tax.”
Initially, the soda-tax campaign intended to put the question on the fall ballot through a petition drive. Organizers gathered twice as many signatures as needed but filed the petitions a day after the deadline in May. So, Cohen and supervisors Scott Wiener, Eric Mar and Mark Farrell utilized a provision that allows supervisors to put a referendum directly on the ballot.
The American Beverage Association said soda taxes “are bad public policy” that drive up grocery bills, hurt small business and “they don’t make people healthier.” U.S. obesity rates have gone up since 2000 “at the same time calories in the American diet from soda went down 39 percent,” said the trade group.
The Philadelphia City Council approved a 1.5-cent an ounce tax on sugary beverages and diet sodas a week ago, with most of the money expected to pay for an expansion of pre-school in the city of 1.5 million people.
Berkeley was the first city with a soda tax, approving a 1-cent per ounce levy by a 3-to-1 margin on the same day in 2014 that the San Francisco initiative failed. Like the new proposal in San Francisco, the Berkeley referendum directed tax revenue to the general fund and set up an advisory committee to recommend to the city council how to spend it.
The 14-page proposal submitted by San Francisco supervisors links sugary beverages to obesity and diabetes, says public broadcaster KQED and reports the tax “is intended to discourage the distribution and consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in San Francisco by taxing their distribution.”
Oakland has scheduled a vote on a 1-cent soda tax as part of the Nov. 8 general election. Efforts are under way to call a vote on a 2-cent tax in Boulder, Colo.