A Santa Monica Assemblyman and two other legislators introduced a bill Wednesday that would impose a tax on soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages sold in California, although similar efforts have failed to garner support in Sacramento.
The bill by Assemblymen Richard Bloom, D-Santa Monica, David Chiu, D-San Francisco, and Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, would add a 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages, with the proceeds earmarked for programs to combat obesity and diabetes and improve dental health.
“Science overwhelmingly demonstrates that the over-consumption of soda and other sugar-laden beverages has led to an epidemic of diabetes, heart disease and obesity throughout our country and here in California,” Bloom said. “Disease that is directly attributed to the over-consumption of sugary beverages costs us billions and brings with it untold misery that disproportionately affects disadvantaged communities and people of color.
“Now is the time to take action and begin to reverse the negative and preventable health impacts caused by these products,” he said.
Similar soda-tax proposals have failed in the Legislature the past two years, including a 1-cent-per-ounce tax proposal in 2014. Soda taxes are traditionally opposed by the California Beverage Association, which has argued that legislators should not be governing the grocery choices of consumers and that the tax proposals would hit low- and middle-income families hardest.
Association officials could not be immediate reached for comment on the latest tax proposal. But CalBev Executive Director Bob Achermann told the Los Angeles Times earlier this week that the tax would be a blow to “hard-working Californians” and “will only make it even more difficult to make ends meet in one of the most expensive states in the nation.”
The bill introduced today would generate an estimated $2.3 billion a year, according to its sponsors, who cited studies showing a 50 percent jump in the number of Californians diagnosed with diabetes between 2001 and 2012, along with sharp increases in the obesity rate.
“The number of children being diagnosed today with adult-onset-diabetes is frightening particularly when you consider that the disease was virtually non-existent among children three decades ago,” Wood said.
