Quick Take
Dr. John Maa, chair of the California Advocacy Committee of the American Heart Association, and Sabrina Adler of nonpartisan nonprofit ChangeLab Solutions write that voters deserve to know the facts about what the beverage industry is doing to thwart the democratic process in relation to local taxes on sugary drink distributors – as Santa Cruz's Measure Z seeks to implement.
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According to the most recent campaign finance filings, just four donors — the parent companies of Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper and Red Bull — have invested $1.2 million to oppose a local ballot measure in Santa Cruz, a city with fewer than 70,000 residents.
The beverage industry is aggressively trying to convince Santa Cruz voters that Measure Z will lead to an “illegal” tax on beverage distributors. In California, many cities like Santa Cruz have a constitutional right to govern their own affairs, including enactment of taxes like this one.
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What the beverage industry is not telling voters is that in 2018, they forced state legislators to pass what we believe to be an illegal moratorium on local sugary drink taxes. Why? Because they know these taxes work.
The only reason a lawsuit would ensue in response to Santa Cruz voters enacting a tax would be if one is filed, most likely by the very same industry that pushed this law to protect its own bottom line. And if it’s challenged, we believe the courts will deem the state law written by the beverage industry illegal and Santa Cruz’s tax legal as a valid exercise of the city’s authority under California law.
As public health and legal experts, we believe that voters considering local taxes on sugary drink distributors — like Santa Cruz’s Measure Z — deserve to know the facts about what the beverage industry is doing to thwart the democratic process in relation to those taxes.
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The reality is that corporations are running scared and spending big because they know sugary drinks are harmful. The voting public sees the benefits that sugary drink taxes have brought to other California cities, including Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, both through people consuming fewer sugary drinks and through investments of revenues back into their communities.
Since 2014, when Berkeley voters approved the first California tax on sugary drink distributors, the beverage industry has spent heavily not just to counteract attempts by voters and community leaders to consider new taxes at the local level but also to block communities from exercising their right to vote on these measures at all.
These corporate-backed efforts peaked in 2018 when beverage industry lobbyists threatened to push a state ballot initiative that would have limited future taxes to fund essential services like firefighting, schools and libraries for California cities. They then told lawmakers they would take the initiative off the ballot if the legislature capitulated to their demands for a 12-year statewide ban on local sugary drink taxes.
Legislators, who felt they had no real choice in the matter, and prominent editorial boards accurately referred to the move as “blackmail,” “extortion” and a “shakedown.”
Also in 2018, Santa Cruz had already voted to put this same tax on distributors of sugary drinks on the ballot. The city was thwarted by the new law, and voters never got a chance to weigh in.
In 2023, advocacy by Santa Cruz locals and public health nonprofits led to a California appeals court ruling that struck down part of the 2018 statewide sugary drink tax ban as a violation of the California constitution.
When Santa Cruz residents vote yes for Measure Z, they are voting not only for a proven public health intervention that will generate revenue for community investments, but also to stop the beverage industry from using its deep pockets to influence election outcomes, as well as to restore the rights of all Californians to have policy debates and votes where they belong: in their own communities, as guaranteed by the California constitution, not behind closed doors in Sacramento.
Dr. John Maa is a general surgeon in San Francisco and is chair of the California Advocacy Committee of the American Heart Association. He championed the San Francisco soda tax Proposition V in 2016 on behalf of the San Francisco Marin Medical Society. The American Heart Association has led the campaign nationally to tax sugar sweetened beverages.
Sabrina Adler is vice president of law at ChangeLab Solutions, a Bay Area-based nonpartisan nonprofit organization that uses law and policy to advance health equity in communities around the country. She works primarily on legal and policy issues related to preemption and good governance, the commercial determinants of health, and healthy children and families.