In 2014, with the passage of Measure D, the city of Berkeley, California became the first
municipality in the United States to pass a tax on sugary drinks. In 2016, the Bay Area cities of
Albany, Oakland, and San Francisco followed suit by passing citizen-led initiatives creating
sugary drink taxes of their own. Although voters in each of these cities voted for sugary drink
taxes by strong margins—with each initiative receiving at least 60 percent of the vote—
residents are still largely unaware of how the tax dollars are being allocated. The
beverage industry spent heavily attempting to defeat these initiatives and has invested in
continuing to sow doubt about how cities would spend sugary drink tax revenue to dissuade
voters and elected officials in other cities and states from passing sugary drink taxes of their
own. Illuminating how the tax revenue is allocated and what programs are funded is crucial to
educating the public on the proactive public health intervention role that sugary drink taxes
play in their communities. In January, our team began researching the actual
implementation of sugary drink tax revenues, in partnership with the Praxis Project and
the Berkeley Food Institute.