Nothing kills a sweet tooth like a soda tax.
Minority and low-income residents of Berkeley, Calif., drank 21 percent less of the sugary stuff after the city implemented an excise tax, according to a study published on Tuesday in the American Journal of Public Health.
Researchers compared sugary drink sales in Berkeley from the four-month period of April 2014 through July 2014 to a five-month period the next year, just after the tax went into effect.
During that same period, soda sales in San Francisco and Oakland to minorities and low-income residents—who are likelier to consume sugary drinks and to suffer the health consequences— ticked up 4 percent.
The tax, approved by voters in November 2014 and implemented in March 2015, charges distributors an additional penny per ounce of sugar-sweetened beverages such as soda, sports drinks, and sweet teas.
Nearly 70 percent of that cost is then passed on to consumers, an earlier study also conducted by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley's Nutrition Policy Institute found.
Berkeley was the first U.S. city to pass a soda tax, following a campaign funded in part by former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as a $1.7 million effort by Big Soda to defeat the measure. (Michael Bloomberg is the founder, majority owner and chief executive officer of Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg.com.)
Source: www.bloomberg.com