More than a little too sweet: Vote yes on Measure Z

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Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other soda companies aim to spend the more than $1 million they have raised to defeat Measure Z in the city of Santa Cruz this November. They’ve reported over $1.2 million in contributions during the most recent reporting periods, but they will still have to be creative as they work to dump such large sums into a local ballot race. 

The biggest campaign I can remember was 2022’s Measure D, which had each side raising about half a million dollars, but before that, a big local race was one that raised $100,000. 

Big Soda is sure to try. If you are registered in Santa Cruz, you have likely already received daily, glossy, full-color, two-sided, oversized postcards urging you to vote no on Z. TV is full of them, and if you are on YouTube, you’ve likely seen local teens lamenting the unfairness of the tax.

Many of the ads focus on key themes of the no on Z push: fear of harm to small businesses, distrust of how the Santa Cruz City Council will spend the taxes and the unfair burden it places on the least wealthy. 

The city of Santa Cruz has a long history now of defeating campaigns and projects that far outspend local proponents. Good examples are Santa Cruz taking on the pro-development forces that wanted to turn Santa Cruz into a little San Jose in the 1960s and early ‘70s, the oil industry that wanted to drill off our coast during the Reagan presidency, or all of the conservative political campaigns that outspent local progressive candidates two or three to one in the early 1980s.

My favorite claim of the No on Z mailers is that Measure Z will cause an increase in the cost of “groceries” and that will hit low-income residents and communities of color particularly hard. Now, calling sugar-sweetened beverages “groceries” is a bit of a stretch, but that claim hits at the heart of the positive reason for voting yes on Measure Z.

With a few exceptions, hunger in America does not take the form of people unable to buy or access some kind of food and beverage; rather, it is a problem of people not getting nutritious food. Second Harvest Food Bank recognized this decades ago.

It wasn’t that Second Harvest couldn’t access, for free, almost limitless amounts of canned and packaged food. Corporations were quite willing to donate these for a tax write-off (typically when the products were getting close to their sell-by dates). These contributed foods do somewhat help fill empty bellies in our country, but they will not sustain a healthy body on their own. There is little nutrition in many of these products. 

That’s why Second Harvest focuses on obtaining and distributing fresh fruit and vegetables and food high in protein.

Sugar-enhanced sodas do not help provide a healthy component to anyone’s diet. 

In fact, they are harmful and dangerous to the human body and result in negative health outcomes, including diabetes and obesity.  There is also a link to tooth decay.  

I will not bury you in statistics, but 11% of people in our country have diabetes. Diabetes is more prevalent among people of color, ranging from 15% to 17%. Twenty-nine percent of those over 65 suffer from the disease. And perhaps most concerning for the future, people diagnosed with pre-diabetes represent 38% of the population, but rates for those over 65 approach half of the population. One out of seven kids in our country suffer from obesity.

Many of the no-on-Z ads focus on the alleged economic harm Measure Z will deliver to low-income residents of the city. But this is ironic because these soda companies actually target their ads toward low-income communities and especially communities of color. Consequently, these are the communities most in need of a program that will help reduce the negative health impacts of sugar-sweetened beverages.

And that is what Measure Z does. 

Although it is a tax and it would raise an estimated $1.3 million (ostensibly for health-related projects), raising funds is not, I believe, its primary purpose. Like the cigarette tax, the main purpose of Measure Z is to slightly raise the cost of unhealthy beverages as a disincentive to consumers. 

Studies show that without a small tax disincentive, Americans, and particularly young people, put away prodigious amounts of sugar-sweetened beverages. You don’t need a statistic from me to know that is true.

There are lots of healthy and tasty alternatives to sugar-sweetened sodas. Alternatives are not hard to find. But the relentless, million-dollar soda advertising campaigns on every form of media result in a subconscious desire in people, and particularly kids, for this harmful product. 

Just as with cigarettes, there is no need for any further evidence that sugar in the amounts filling Cokes, Pepsis and other sugar-sweetened beverages is harmful to human beings and the key link to the medical crisis we face. There is a clear consensus in the medical community.

Measure Z places a 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. It’s not clear if that fee will be paid by the consumer or the distributor, but the net result would be about a quarter extra on a 12-ounce Coke. 

The city is not banning sugar-sweetened beverages, but providing a signal that there are better alternatives. 

It worked with tobacco and it can work with sugar-filled sodas. 

Sugar, like tobacco and many other drugs, creates dependence and habits that are difficult to undo, but a recent study found that soda sales in Berkeley dropped by 21% in low-income neighborhoods during the first four months of the implementation of a tax similar to Measure Z.

The sugar lobby is a strong one. For years, our former state Sen. Bill Monning and other legislators tried to get a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages at the state level, but the soda lobby was just too strong. They even got state legislation outlawing local soda taxes in California. 

But a successful lawsuit by Santa Cruz City Council members and others determined that the state cannot block a charter city, which Santa Cruz is, from passing something like Measure Z.

Spending in the tens of thousands of dollars rather than the million or more being spent by their opponents, the local yes on Z group, is endorsed by local health providers, the Santa Cruz mayor and six councilmembers, the Democratic Party, the Women’s Democratic Club, local unions, the NAACP and a host of other state and local officials, former officials, and other local citizens. It still faces an uphill battle against the Soda Lobby.

But it wouldn’t be the first that little Santa Cruz takes on a well-funded, mega-corporate campaign and still prevails. We stopped Big Oil from destroying our coast and played a role in dramatically reducing cigarette use in our community and country; so this fight isn’t over yet.