Soda tax won't deter obesity, sugar habits

Santa Fe voters turned out in record numbers last week and soundly defeated a proposed 2-cents-per-ounce tax on sugary soft drinks that Mayor Javier Gonzales hoped would put an extra 1,000 kids in pre-kindergarten classes for free or at cut-rate prices.

While the proposal might have sounded good on its face — fight obesity and get more kids into early education — 58 percent of those who voted didn’t drink that Kool-Aid. And an impressive 37.6 percent of registered voters turned out to vote.

Had the soda tax passed, Santa Fe would have matched Boulder, Colorado, as having the highest such tax in the nation. In Santa Fe’s case, it was estimated that it would raise about $10.6 million a year for early childhood education — and added $1.44 to the cost of a six pack and nearly $22 to a canister of lemonade mix.

This was a hotly debated contest, pitting lower-income Hispanic residents who rejected the tax against high-end neighborhoods that favored it, though not on Election Day. It was fueled by a jaw-dropping $3.3 million spent nearly equally by supporters and opponents.

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, who banned the sale of large sugary drinks when he was mayor of New York City (and was then reversed by that state’s highest court), sank more than $1 million into the pro-tax effort here. He also spent $1.6 million to help get a similar tax passed in Philadelphia and $18 million to get them passed in San Francisco and Oakland.

And because a successful campaign in Santa Fe was likely to fuel initiatives across New Mexico, we’re glad the initiative failed.

As the Albuquerque Journal has noted before, there’s ample research showing any educational gains youngsters make in pre-K virtually disappear by third grade, though other research indicates pre-K students are likely to have higher incomes and not turn to crime later in life.

There was little assurance Santa Fe’s expanded pre-K program would be well vetted and monitored. Mayor Gonzales promised the program would be staffed by highly trained and licensed people with high-quality credentials and services. But those are the same adjectives used every year to try to justify a raid on the Land Grant Permanent Fund to fund early childhood “education,” sans any supporting qualifications or accountability measures.

There’s no question New Mexico, like every other state, has a serious problem with obesity and diabetes. But it’s debatable whether a soda tax would drastically change people’s behavior in the long run.

And there’s little doubt many soda/juice/energy-drinking Santa Feans would simply drive outside the city limits to other municipalities to load up on their favorite sugary drinks — which would have cut into that $10 million anticipated for pre-K.

— Albuquerque Journal