Santa Cruz v. Big Soda: Vote Yes on Z

Santa Cruz, a college town on the California coast south of San Francisco, has a ballot initiative to tax sugar-sweetened beverages (Berkeley has one too but its vote is expected to be so favorable that the soda industry isn’t even bothering to fight it).

But the soda industry is sinking a fortune—more than $1.6 million so far—into fighting the Santa Cruz proposal.

The reason is obvious, as Politico explains.

In 2018, industry lobbyists succeeded in pressuring the Legislature to pass a bill banning local governments from enacting new soda taxes for six years.

With next month’s vote, Santa Cruz officials hope theirs will be the first city to attempt to defy that ban by winning voter approval for Measure Z. The two-cent-per-bottle tax is specifically crafted to provoke a lawsuit over the constitutionality of the 2018 state law…Those soda giants are now descending on the Santa Cruz boardwalk with a familiar playbook, relying on seemingly bottomless corporate resources to flood the city with an anti-tax message updated for a new moment in which soda has lost its stranglehold on the American palate.

Do soda taxes discourage purchases?  So it seems.  The money also can be used for good purposes, as it has been in Berkeley.  A win-win for public health!

If you are a Santa Cruz voter, here’s your chance to vote for something that might actually do some good—and an excellent reason to go to the polls and do your overall civic duty, while you are at it.