Berkeley voters will decide on November 3 whether to double the city's soda tax from 1 cent to 2 cents per fluid ounce, a move that would also convert the levy from a general tax into a special tax earmarked specifically for nutrition, health and water-access programs. The measure, known as Measure AA, arrives twelve years after Berkeley became the first city in the nation to tax sugary drinks.
What Measure AA Would Actually Change
According to The Daily Californian, the measure would raise the existing soda tax from 1 cent to 2 cents per fluid ounce while converting it from a general tax into a special tax. Under the new structure, 42.5% of the revenue would go toward cooking and gardening programs in Berkeley schools, another 42.5% would fund community dental, health and water services, and the remaining 15% would pay for oversight and reporting, per the KQED voter guide. The original tax used the general fund, which kept its passage threshold at a simple majority.
That original tax, known as Measure D, established a one-cent-per-fluid-ounce charge on sugar-sweetened beverages, as Local News Matters reports. Berkeley voters approved it with 76% of the vote in 2014, a landslide that the same voter guide attributes in part to the fact that proceeds flowed directly into the general fund. KQED's voter guide puts the tax's total haul at $12 million over the past decade.
Where the Money Has Gone So Far
The city had collected roughly $5 million in soda-tax revenue through a recent June 30 cutoff, according to the Healthy Berkeley website as cited by the voter guide. In the program's first fiscal year, that funding stream sent $1,287,500 to seven community-based programs across six local organizations, including $637,500 to Berkeley Unified School District during the 2016-2017 fiscal year. Healthy Black Families, which runs farmers-market tours and healthy meal preparation and shopping classes, received $245,874 in soda-tax funding during that period, the same reporting shows. A 2025 Berkeley City Council agenda document also lists a $140,750 total grant to the Ecology Center for its For Thirst, Water First! program and a $204,316 total grant to Healthy Black Families for its Thirsty for Change! initiative, though the full scope of that grant cycle was not detailed.
Multiple nonprofits and school programs have split millions of dollars in tax proceeds across cooking, gardening, dental and water-access initiatives over the past decade.
Did the Tax Change Drinking Habits?
The evidence on consumption is fairly consistent, even if the evidence on long-term health outcomes is not. A 2017 analysis found the tax was associated with a 10% drop in citywide soda consumption during its first year, alongside increased sales of water and milk, according to the same reporting. A 2016 UC Berkeley study found an even steeper 21% decline in sugary-beverage consumption specifically in low-income neighborhoods. The KQED voter guide summarizes the broader pattern similarly: consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages went down while water consumption climbed.
Health outcomes are murkier. A separate study of more than one million adults in California cities with and without soda taxes, hosted on the National Institutes of Health's PMC database, examined body mass index and rates of overweight or obesity across those cities. A related Kaiser Permanente study, described on the Kaiser Permanente research site, compares weight, obesity and diabetes outcomes in four Northern California cities with sugary-beverage taxes against control cities. KQED's voter guide notes that opponents point to this mixed record directly, arguing there is no proof that soda taxes improve health and that obesity has multiple causes.
A Model That Spread, and the Pushback That Followed
Berkeley's tax became a template cited alongside similar measures adopted in Oakland, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Seattle, per the voter guide. But opponents of Measure AA argue the tax has also pushed some Berkeley residents to simply buy their sugary drinks outside city limits, a dynamic the voter guide says studies have identified as undercutting local businesses. California lawmakers reached a 2018 tax preemption deal that grandfathered in Berkeley's tax, according to Berkeleyside's 2019 reporting.
