Little Santa Cruz Beats Big Sugar

Last summer, the Santa Cruz city council voted to put a proposal on the November ballot—Measure Z— taxing soda and other sugary drinks. The measure's stated goal was to foster healithier dietary habits among kids, and raise more than $1 million a year for children's health initiatives.

In response, a coalition of companies including the Coca-Cola Co., PepsiCo Inc., Keurig Dr. Pepper Inc., and Red Bull pooled their resources, ultimately raising $1.7 million to defeat the measure. Over the following months the No on Z campaign blanketed the city with fliers, sent canvassers door-to-door, and ran a social media and TV-ad blitz.

Supporters of the tax spent $80,000 and, as you may have guessed, won. The fight isn’t over—Big Sugar has promised a lawsuit.

Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson, Santa Cruz’s vice mayor, says she and others in her community have been working towards developing this policy for two decades, beginning when she was a community organizer with the local branch of United Way. She says the soda tax is “a policy solution to some major health disparities that we have here in Santa Cruz County, throughout California, and throughout the United States around obesity—specifically childhood obesity—and dental cavities among certain population groups.”

For Kalantari-Johnson, the soda tax grew out of a commitment to bring the "health and well-being" of her constituents into focus. That value, she says, along with sustainability and equity, guide "every policy decision, every budget decision, every program decision that we make at the city of Santa Cruz. We use those three pillars as our guides."

In this interview with Ryan Coonerty on the "An Honarable Profession" podcast, Vice-Mayor Kalantari-Johnson tells the story of the ongoing soda-tax war, explains her health-focused approach to governing, and tells of a childhood encounter with the Iranian morality police that led to her family's escape to the United States.