More soda tax measures may be coming

sfgate.com ^ | Thursday, November 29, 2012 | Carolyn Jones

[Lonely Bull]

Richmond's soda tax may have faltered badly on election day, but the idea is now bubbling up in other Bay Area cities and counties.

Officials in San Francisco, Berkeley, Alameda County, Vallejo, El Cerrito and other jurisdictions have discussed, or plan to discuss, placing soda taxes on ballots.

"We lost the election, but the movement will eventually win," said Dr. Jeff Ritterman, the Richmond city councilman who sponsored Measure N. "Momentum is on our side."

[Lonely Bull]

Imagine when I came here to post this thread and found this as the latest existing thread:

Obama’s 2009 stimulus chief says taxes and rules on junk food are coming

[Brad from Tennessee]

If soda drinks are truly harmful they should be banned or manufacturers should be required to reformulate their products to make them safer. This would take action by state legislatures or Congress. Instead these local jurisdictions come up with taxes whose greatest impact is on the ignorant, compulsive poor. Congress won't ban tobacco because U.S. cigarettes are a huge trade item overseas. Outlawing a product domestically but shipping it to foreigners would be too mercenary—like the British selling opium to the Chinese. Instead they tax the poor and the addicted to death because those people have no lobby. CocaCola and Pepsi suffer under the same hypocrisy and a greedy Congress is now figuring out how to tax soda pop.

[pepsionice]

I would agree...banning or reformulating would be better, but we simply aren’t going to allow that. I’m of the generation that remembers the old Coke bottles in the smaller form, which was enough for a guy to feel refreshed (roughly six ounces). The idea of these twenty ounce bottles now being the norm....just means more added sugar. And I don’t think any of the diet sodas are that good for you either.

Course, the NY City effort to downsize your soda got a lot of hostile attention.

Two years ago....I finally just switched over to unsweetened tea. I allow myself one soda a month. It was a personal decision but I think people will eventually come around to the idea that we’ve made a good simple drink into huge part of our life...consuming twenty and thirty ounces of soda per day easily.

[Domangart]

The clerks at the Port of LA want $195,00 and 11 weeks payed leave. Some school districts issued 40 years bonds at 16x the money and we get some a hole pusshimg soda tax. No wonder this state is full of kooks.

[Uncle Lonny]

Doan ferget that them carbonated drinks if full of them bubbles of green house gasses which is warmin the planet an will destroy earth. If it doan explode on December 21.

I seen it on the History Channel.

[Truth29]

"Doan ferget that them carbonated drinks if full of them bubbles of green house gasses which is warmin the planet an will destroy earth. If it doan explode on December 21."

Now there is an idea for a government funded study. How many gigatons of CO2 are released by carbonated beverages in the world? And then another study to determine the effect on global warming. And then a UN initiative to ban carbonated beverages with an appropriate bureaucracy to steer this planet saving initiative with a few lux conferences each year to discuss the schedule for next years progress conferences... Oh, and get Obama a flat Coke.

[sergeantdave]

“If soda drinks are truly harmful they should be banned or manufacturers should be required to reformulate their products to make them safer.”

Reformulated pop known as carbonated fruit drinks exist. They’re made of real fruit juice and carbonated water. They’re a bit pricey but they are available.

In addition, Israel’s Sodastream is available now in America, You can make your own pop for about a dime a glass and load it with all kinds of healthy and hippy organic stuff if one so desires.

[Buckeye McFrog]

Isn’t the CEO of Pepsi an Indian broad who was 110% in the tank for Obama?

[Brad from Tennessee]

Sodastream offers some possibilities. Among my favorite soft drinks have been celery tonic and ginger ale. These got their start as health elixirs. If a person decided to create these drinks from scratch in the kitchen the result might be a drink heavy enough with real ginger or celery to be therapeutic. I read somewhere that the original Dr. Pepper was made from real fruit extracts, primarily prune.