US beverage industry pours cash into fighting sugar taxes and warning labels

Analysis has revealed the three biggest members of the USA’s soda (soft drink) lobby — the American Beverage Association, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo — have spent at least US$67 million since 2009 to defeat taxes and warning labels in 19 cities and states.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest analysed lobbying and ballot initiative disclosure reports, revealing an additional annual spend of US$14 million at the federal level. There, the public health objectives of the industry association and two companies have included opposition to a federal soda excise tax, the newly released and updated Nutrition Facts label with a line for added sugars, and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which proposed a quantitative limit — 12 teaspoons a day — for added sugars.

Spending by ‘Big Soda’ rose from around US$1–5 million a year in the early 2000s to a peak of US$40 million in 2009 when Congress considered a soda tax to pay for healthcare reform.

“There is no better way to understand the public health importance of soda taxes and warning labels than to see how much money Big Soda is willing to spend to oppose them,” said CSPI Health Promotion Policy Director Jim O’Hara.

In 2014, Big Soda spent more than US$2.4 million in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat a soda tax in Berkeley, California, and US$9.2 million in San Francisco, where a soda tax ballot initiative won 55% of the vote but failed to garner the two-thirds required.

In the first half of 2016, more than US$1.3m was spent to oppose soda-tax ballot measures in San Francisco and Oakland, California. According to one news report, the industry has reserved more than US$9 million in television advertising for the final weeks of the San Francisco campaign, where a second vote scheduled for November requires only majority support to pass.

2016 has also seen the industry pour more than US$9.3 million into a failed attempt to defeat a 1.5-cent per ounce soda tax adopted by the Philadelphia City Council. The city was blanketed with more than US$9 million in industry-funded television and radio advertising and other paid media, outspending public health advocates by a ratio of 4 to 1.