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 Sales of sugar-sweetened beverages dropped nearly 10 percent during
the first year of the tax, which raised $1.4 million for child
nutrition and community health programs, a new study showed.
“I’m calling it a home run,” lead author Dr. Lynn D. Silver, a
senior advisor at the Public Health Institute in Oakland, said of
the measure.
She ticked off the accomplishments of the penny-per-ounce tax in a
phone interview. After it took effect in March 2015, residents drank
less sugary drinks and more water, milk and other healthier
beverages; average consumer grocery bills did not rise, despite soda
company warnings; local store revenue did not, as tax opponents
predicted, fall; and the tax raised money for health-education
programs.
Berkeley voters levied the tax on soda and other sugary drinks to
try to curb consumption and stem the epidemics of obesity and
diabetes. Similar taxes have been levied around the globe - from
Mexico to Colombia, France and South Africa.
Last year, other U.S. municipalities - including Philadelphia, San
Francisco, Oakland and Cook County, Illinois, which includes Chicago
- approved laws to tax sugary beverages.
The new study, reported in PLoS Medicine, evaluated changes in
beverage sales in Berkeley during the tax’s first year.
Sugar-sweetened drink sales fell 9.6 percent compared to predicted
sales without the tax, while sales of untaxed beverages, like water
and milk, rose 3.5 percent.
“The findings suggest that sugary-drink taxes make health and
economic sense,” Silver said.
Proponents of soda taxes hailed the study as evidence of their
effectiveness.
Michael F. Jacobson, president of the Center for Science in the
Public Interest in Washington, D.C., called the tax “a huge
public-health victory.” He urged policymakers and voters in cities
and counties without soda taxes to review the study and press for
similar measures.
“This study won’t stop Big Soda from claiming that taxes don’t
work,” said Jacobson, who was not involved with the research. “But
if soda taxes didn’t make a significant dent in soda consumption,
the industry wouldn’t be fighting taxes so hard.”
The American Beverage Association, which represents Coca-Cola and
PepsiCo, said in a statement that the new “study acknowledges that
taxes do not demonstrate a meaningful reduction in obesity rates.”
Silver called the trade group’s statement “simply false.” Her study
did not attempt to judge the tax’s impact on obesity and diabetes
rates.
“The soda tax did what it set out to do, which was to lower the
sales of sugar-sweetened beverages and to increase consumption of
healthier beverages,” she said.
“Our current obesity and diabetes rates are the result of decades of
intensive marketing and growing consumption of sugar-sweetened
beverages and other unhealthy foods,” she said. “It is far too soon
to assess the impact of the tax on obesity and diabetes rates.”
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Silver said that when she was training to become a pediatrician in
the 1980s, she never saw a child with type 2 diabetes, which used to
be called adult-onset diabetes. Today, she regularly sees children
with type 2 diabetes.
She has watched mothers in clinic waiting rooms feeding their
toddlers baby bottles filled with soda, she added.
Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, said the study
confirmed evidence from previous studies of the benefits of soda
taxes, and she urged the beverage industry to embrace the taxes.
“Spending millions to fight local citizens working tirelessly to
improve their community puts the beverage industry on the wrong side
of health and history,” Brown, who was not involved with the study,
said in a statement.
The American Beverage Association downplayed the significance of the
new study, saying the unique demographic profile of the Northern
California city of Berkeley makes it a “challenging place to
determine the true impact of a beverage tax.”
Berkeley residents do tend to be higher income, better educated and
drink less soda than residents of most other American cities. But
Silver pointed out that her study’s findings mirrored those of
another recent study of a soda tax in Mexico.
“In fact,” she said, “we saw an even greater decline in sugary-drink
sales in Berkeley in the first year, in spite of Berkeley’s relative
prosperity.”
Mexicans cut their purchases of soda and other sugar-sweetened
beverages by 5.5 percent the first year that a tax was imposed and
by nearly 10 percent in the second year, the previous study showed.
Reuters reported elsewhere today that sales of soda drinks in the
U.S. fell in 2016 for the 12th year in a row, "as demand was hit by
consumers choosing healthier options and a slew of sugar taxes aimed
at stemming obesity and diabetes took effect."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2pxNuMW PLOS Medicine, online April 18, 2017.
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