Posted on November 2, 2016 | Huffington Post by Erin Schumaker
Several cities have soda tax proposals on the ballot Nov. 8., including San Francisco and Oakland, California and Boulder, Colorado. For those voting on these sometimes controversial initiatives, a new study in the American Journal of Public Health provides some important perspective.
By tracing the country’s first local soda tax, enacted in March 2015 in Berkeley, California, researchers found that taxing sugar-sweetened beverages by a penny per ounce reduced soda consumption by 21 percent in two low-income neighborhoods.
Posted on October 28, 2016 | Bloomberg by Deena Shanker
There's another showdown this Election Day, besides Clinton vs. Trump. The $72.6 billion soda industry is facing four initiatives to tax the sale of sugar-sweetened beverages, one of the biggest battles yet in the U.S. soda wars.
If the initiatives—three in California's Bay Area cities and one in Boulder, Colo.— succeed, and spread as others have, the push to tax soda could ultimately affect the health of millions of Americans.
Posted on October 27, 2016 | Business Insider by Kate Taylor
A new study from Harvard's T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that proposed soda taxes in San Francisco's Bay Area and Boulder, Colo., would lead to millions of dollars in savings on healthcare costs.
The study released Thursday is particularly timely because three cities in California and Boulder will vote on November 8 on whether or not to pass a soda tax.
Posted on October 27, 2016 | Forbes by Nancy Fink Huehnergarth
If voters approve all four soda tax measures on the ballot next month in San Francisco, Oakland and Albany CA, and, Boulder CO, hundreds of lives and over $60 million in healthcare costs will be saved over the next 10 years.
Those are the findings reported today by researchers for Harvard’s CHOICES project, a national peer-reviewed computer model that was localized to project the financial and health impacts of sugary drink taxes. The model was first used in Philadelphia prior to its passing a 1-1/2 cent-per-ounce tax on soft drinks earlier this year.
Posted on October 27, 2016 | Boulder Daily Camera by Alex Burness
The tax on sugary drinks on Boulder's ballot would prevent about 1,000 obesity cases and cut an estimated $6.4 million in health care spending over 10 years, Harvard University researchers say.
Using census data for Boulder County, Harvard's CHOICES ( Childhood Obesity Intervention Cost-Effectiveness Study) project localized a model first used in Philadelphia and also used to examine projected impacts of sugary drink taxes in other areas, including the three California cities that will join Boulder in voting on such taxes this November.
Posted on October 20, 2016 | Politico by Helena Bottemiller Evich
Bernie Sanders has unwittingly become one of Big Soda’s biggest allies in its war against soft drink taxes on the ballot in four U.S. cities this November — and he’s not happy about it.
The Democratic socialist firebrand is demanding that the American Beverage Association, a powerful trade group representing Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, stop using his likeness in the tens of millions of dollars of anti-soda tax ads flooding television and mailboxes across the Bay Area, where San Francisco, Oakland and Albany, Calif. all have tax measures on the ballot.
Posted on October 9, 2016 | sfchronicle.com By
The beverage industry has already spent about $14 million to defeat three controversial soda tax measures on Bay Area ballots next month, and almost all of their ads use the phrase “don’t tax our groceries.”
The advertisements claim that not only will sugary drinks cost more if the measures pass, but so will everything else at the market. But is it true that everything from paper towels to broccoli will be more expensive?
Posted on September 15, 2016 | Pennlive.com By
Pennsylvania made headlines this summer when the Philadelphia City Council passed an ordinance imposing a city-wide excise tax on soft drinks and other sweetened drinks.
When it takes effect in January 2017, the tax on sugary and diet drinks is expected to start generating about $91 million annually, according to projections from Mayor Jim Kenney's office.
Posted on September 14, 2016 | Forbes by Nancy Fink Huehnergarth
As expected, the beverage industry filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas on Wednesday seeking to have the city’s 1 ½ cent per ounce tax on soft drinks declared “unlawful”. Lawyers for the plaintiffs are also seeking an injunction to halt the implementation of the tax on January 1st.
The beverage tax, which will be levied on both sugary and diet drinks, was passed by Philadelphia’s City Council and signed into law by Mayor Jim Kenney in June. Kenney proposed the tax in early 2016 as a way to raise about $92 million a year for universal pre-K and other Philadelphia programs and services.
Posted on September 12, 2016 | CNN by Jacqueline Howard
Scientists began to uncover a link between sugar and heart disease about 60 years ago, and now, the general consensus among experts is that sugar intake is associated with heart disease risk.
