iStock/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — Sipping that sweet soft drink with lunch might be a little more expensive in four cities after this year’s election.
Initiatives asking voters to support or oppose new taxes on sweetened drinks like sodas are on ballots in Boulder, Colorado, and the California cities of Albany, San Francisco and Oakland.
If passed, these cities will join Berkeley, California, and Philadelphia as the only cities in the nation to have the taxes that are designed to combat bulging bellies.
According to the World Health Organization, several countries across the Americas have introduced similar taxes including Barbados, Chile and Dominica.
However, one country’s implementation of a soda tax appears to have turned the most heads: Mexico.
The United States’ southern neighbor instituted the tax in 2014, and experts and reports suggest that it has been very successful in curbing consumption of beverages that can lead to negative health outcomes.
Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition and economics at the University of North Carolina who is studying the efficacy of these so-called sin taxes, told ABC News that a year after Mexico’s soda tax went into effect, consumption rates had dropped by 17 percent among low-income individuals. For the average Mexican, consumption dropped 12 percent.
He said that preliminary data suggested that rates dropped even further during the second year after the tax was imposed.
This matters, Popkin pointed out, because Mexicans consume “about the same of level of sugary beverages as the low-income Americans consume.”
Americans consume the highest amounts of soft drinks (including sparkling juices, but not energy drinks) per person than any other country, according to market research firm Euromonitor. Mexico is in fourth place by the same measure.
Popkin said that he saw a shift in consumer behavior after Berkeley’s tax became law.
The proposal in Oakland would see a tax of 1 cent per ounce imposed on sugary drinks, according to ABC station KGO-TV. The same amount would be levied under San Francisco and Albany’s proposals, according to the local governments in San Francisco and in Albany. And in Boulder, the proposal would see a 2 cent per ounce tax imposed, according the local government.
Votes on the ballot measures comes just weeks after the World Health Organization released a report saying that there are “reasonable and increasing evidence that appropriately designed taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages would result in proportional reductions in consumption.”
The report recommended that “countries consider the use of economic tools that are justified by evidence, and may include taxes and subsidies, to improve access to healthy dietary choices and create incentives for behaviors associated with improved health outcomes and discourage the consumption of less healthy options.”
That’s bureaucratic speak for using taxes and subsidies to encourage people to eat and drink healthy foods and drinks.
But these measures aren’t without opposition.
Lauren Kane, senior director for communications at the American Beverage Association, a trade group representing the non-alcoholic drink industry in the U.S., told ABC News that “taxes singling out one item in the grocery cart do not make people healthier and real word evidence backs this up.”
“While we disagree with some in the public health community on discriminatory taxes, America’s beverage companies recognize we have a role to play in addressing complex public health challenges because we too want a stronger, healthy America,” she added. “That’s why we are working with prominent public health organizations to reduce calories and sugar from beverages in the American diet with a focus on communities where the obesity challenge is the greatest.”
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