ABSTRACT
In November 2014, voters in Berkeley, CA made their city the first in the nation to impose a tax on the distribution of sugar-sweetened beverages like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Gatorade, Arizona Green Tea and Starbucks Frappuccino. In May 2015, Berkeley City Council members announced that, in the first month in which the tax was collected, the city took in $116,000, at the rate of one cent per ounce of qualifying beverages distributed. Although the ballot measure allows the city to spend the money on whatever it wants, Berkeley has convened a panel of education and health experts to advise the council on how best to spend the proceeds, which are intended to be used to reduce consumption of sugarsweetened beverages (SSBs) and to deal with the public health effects of consumption, which can include obesity and diabetes (Lochner, 2015). Although Berkeley was the first city in the nation to succeed in passing the so-called “soda tax,” it was far from the first to attempt such a policy change. Thirty previous city and state soda tax measures had failed, the failures including a 2014 proposal levying two cents per ounce on SSBs distributed in nearby San Francisco (Knight, 2014). So why did Berkeley’s measure succeed where so many others had failed? The answer, of course, includes numerous factors, including the size and demographic characteristics of the cities, the specific nature of the tax proposals, and the political strategies and funding of pro-and antitax groups. However, one element that seems to have contributed to Berkeley’s success was the way in which its pro-tax coalition used the media in concert with community organizing. The coalition used
analyses of news coverage of previous soda tax efforts to inform their strategies, which included early recruitment of people from low-income and minority groups who, in other cities, had been drawn into the soda tax opposition camps. In addition, noting that the beverage industry had defeated previous measures in large part due to “unprecedented spending on advertising including TV, billboards and direct mail” (Quintero, 2014, para. 13), the Berkeley organizers decided to make that spending part of the debate. By using “Berkeley vs. Big Soda” as its campaign slogan, the pro-tax coalition framed the debate as a David-andGoliath contest that put the beverage industry’s flood of direct mail advertising against the tax in a negative light; the coalition effectively framed the beverage industry’s extensive advertising as an attempt to “buy” the community’s vote (Quintero, 2014). Previous failed soda tax efforts also taught the Berkeley coalition the value of embedding their message in the values important to their community; in Berkeley, this led to media messages reminding the community of its “long tradition of supporting public health measures, as well as putting people’s health before profit” (Quintero, 2014, para. 16). The coalition also identified spokespeople willing to tell the community, through the media, about the health impacts of SSBs, such as a
Figure 14.1: The 2014 Media Advocacy Campaign for Local “Soda Tax”
respected community member who spoke about losing his son to diabetes. Letters-to-the-editor and opinion columns sent to the local news media also helped the coalition get their message out. It remains to be seen whether Berkeley’s success on the soda tax will stand as a fluke, possible only in a quirky, ultra-liberal college town, or whether it will inspire and instruct other coalitions in other cities (or even states) to pass taxes or other policy efforts that reduce consumption of unhealthy beverages. In either case, Berkeley vs. Big Soda illustrates a number of key principals of a strategy known as “media advocacy,” which is a type of public health campaign that uses mass media, along with community organizing, to influence health behaviors through public policy change. Media advocacy thus represents the intentional use of media, primarily news coverage but also sometimes paid advertising, to change the health environment in which people operate through changes in government or corporate policy (e.g., public policies such as taxes on smoking, alcohol and unhealthy beverages, or bans on the use of trans-fats, corporate practices such as providing health insurance options that reward employees for engaging in healthy behaviors, offering healthier options in fast-food “value meals” or removing known carcinogens from the products they sell).
