A Treasure Trove Inventory of Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Policies in the United States, 2014-2023

• Published in: American journal of public health (1971) 2024-12, Vol.114 (12), p.1326-1327
• Main Authors: Crosbie, Eric, Schmidt, Laura
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Alcohol; Beverages; Consumer behavior; Consumption; Diabetes; Diabetes mellitus (non-insulin dependent); Diffusion barriers; Diffusion rate; Health care; Impact analysis; Industrial organization; Innovations; Inventory; Labels; Meta-analysis; Obesity; Policies; Preempting; Public health; State legislatures; Sugar; Taxation; Taxes; Warning; Warning labels
• ISSN: 0090-0036; 1541-0048; 1541-0048
• DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2024.307881

By contrast, taxation is one of the most effective strategies for reducing SSB consumption, and it is notable that this strategy has been one of the most aggressively fought by the SSB industry-so much so that industry actors have battled to repeal soda taxes even after they have been passed and enacted for years.5 Researchers and advocates should double down on building the evidence base on the SSB policies that are the most effective and should actively disseminate this knowledge to support the hard work of optimizing policy for true public health impact. In 2019, American Beverage Association (ABA) et al. v City & County of San Francisco, the trade organization representing the SSB industry, successfully blocked the policy because of the size of the required warning and indicated, without ruling definitively, that words such as "type 2" diabetes and "may" could be needed in the text to make it factually accurate.9 Industry opposes SSB warning labels and aggressively acts to block, weaken, and delay these policies precisely because they are highly effective tools for reducing consumption.10 The inventory suggests that it will likely require more valiant efforts such as San Francisco's, even if they fail at enactment, before we can see widespread enactment and diffusion of this evidence-based policy intervention. In 2018, the California state legislature was essentially blackmailed by the American Beverage Association in a last-ditch effort to support a state law that preempted any locality in California from enacting SSB taxes through 2030 5 Similar sneaky and quick state preemptive efforts have succeeded in Arizona, Michigan, and Washington, which have seemed to succeed in preventing the diffusion of these policies throughout the United States.11 This inventory provides further evidence of this by showing that the speed of new local soda tax laws slowed after 2017, when state preemption efforts picked up speed. Impact of sugar-sweetened beverage warning labels on consumer behaviors: a systematic review and meta-analysis.