Evidence mounts that sugary drink taxes make communities healthier

Years of effort by the American Heart Association and community partners across the country are paying off in the work to reduce sugary drink consumption, a major contributor to heart disease and diabetes.

Since Berkeley, California, enacted a tax on sugary beverages in 2015, research shows that such taxes make communities healthier and help fund vital well-being programs such as access to healthy food and early childhood education.

In a recent policy brief, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania said their analysis of 33 studies of tax policies around the world found that sweetened beverage taxes reduce consumption of the drinks and overall sugar intake. They also found improvements in obesity and body mass index as well as better oral health and improved pregnancy and birth outcomes.

Mary Ann Bauman, M.D., American Heart Association Western States Region board member, was a major advocate of Seattle’s campaign to impose a sugary drink tax in 2017. She noted that sugary drinks are the leading contributor of added dietary sugars in the United States and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.

“One study found that drinking more than 12 ounces daily decreased good cholesterol and increased triglycerides,” Bauman said. “These beverages do not provide nutritional value, and anything we can do to encourage the public to drink water instead is good for the heart and brain.”

The research comes on the heels of Santa Cruz, California, becoming the latest U.S. city, in May, to implement a sugary beverage tax, following Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oakland and Albany, California. The state legislatures in Maryland and Connecticut also introduced measures this year that would tax sugary beverages.

Lindsay Hovind, an American Heart Association regional vice president of advocacy, said what’s particularly exciting about the successful implementation of these taxes is that they actually foster two positive health impacts.

“One is the tax itself, which by raising the price of sugary drinks drives down consumption,” she said. “But also, it's generating revenue that can fund critical community needs.”

In Seattle, for example, about $20 million in tax revenue has been spent annually since 2019 on programs to improve access to healthy food in low-income areas. Meanwhile, research shows that the rate of obesity in the city has declined by 4.5%, Hovind said.

A key factor in the success of the taxes has been the American Heart Association’s partnerships with community organizations that decide how to spend the revenue generated, Hovind said. The beverage industry greatly outspends public health advocates to lobby lawmakers; community buy-in was critical.

Hovind and others pursuing the tax in Seattle had seen photos in the news of soda delivery trucks lined up around Philadelphia City Hall to protest a soda tax, she noted.

“We didn't have the kind of war chest to spend the way the industry did,” she said. “So, it was really a classic legislative campaign of needing to be more persuasive.”

The 2-cent-per-ounce tax in Santa Cruz is estimated to generate $1.3 million per year, which a community advisory board will recommend how to spend. In San Francisco, the tax revenue paid for water filling stations in schools and a variety of health programs, and in Berkeley it has funded nutrition education programs in schools.

In Philadelphia, the revenue went toward funding universal access to pre-kindergarten and other important community projects. The tax also reduced adults’ soda consumption by 35%, according to the University of Pennsylvania researchers.

Dwayne Wharton, a public health advocate who was working for The Food Trust when Philadelphia passed its tax, said the success was informed by a prior failed attempt at passing a tax. The first time it was proposed, advocates focused on using it to plug a shortfall in the city’s general budget while speaking about public health overall.

By the second attempt, a broad coalition came together with specific goals in mind, to fund early childhood education and to renovate parks and recreation centers, Wharton said.

“It was an interesting pairing of advocates,” he said, from the Food Trust to the American Heart Association to many early childhood education providers and advocates for parks and recreation centers. “We all combined efforts in order to advance the effort, so the diverse coalition that was formed was really effective.”

Christina Roberto, a co-author of the University of Pennsylvania study, told PBS NewsHour that she was surprised Philadelphia’s tax would have such a measurable impact. “I’ve been working in this area for about 20 years, and I have never seen a behavioral effect that large,” she said. “I just felt like, oh my gosh, this is an incredible intervention to actually get people to stop or consume fewer of these drinks that we know are making us sick.”

Hovind said advocates are excited that Santa Cruz’s move has reignited the momentum for measures against sugary drinks. The beverage taxes introduced in the Maryland and Connecticut legislatures would pay for school meals for all students, but several other measures are also in the works.

“In the 2026 legislative session, we expect to see a number of statewide taxes and some communities move forward in pursuit of these,” Hovind said.