Coke, Pepsi pour more money into Initiative 1634; measure now has $2.9 million behind it

A tor­rent of mon­ey from Big Soda is caus­ing the cof­fers of the cam­paign to qual­i­fy Ini­tia­tive 1634 to the Novem­ber 2018 bal­lot to fizz over, new­ly filed reports sub­mit­ted to Wash­ing­ton State’s Pub­lic Dis­clo­sure Com­mis­sion show.

I‑1634 is a mea­sure backed by Coca-Cola, Pep­si, Dr Pep­per Snap­ple Group, and Red Bull to pro­hib­it any local juris­dic­tions (aside from Seat­tle, that is) from levy­ing tax­es on the sale of the unhealthy, sug­ary bev­er­ages that their bot­tlers man­u­fac­ture, and which they mar­ket for con­sump­tion around the globe.

The quar­tet got the I‑1634 effort rolling last month with $1.9 mil­lion in seed mon­ey. In May, they poured anoth­er $1 mil­lion into the cam­paign’s war chest. It has now raised a total of $2.9 mil­lion, with most com­ing from Coke and Pepsi.

The Wash­ing­ton Food Indus­try Asso­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents inde­pen­dent and fam­i­ly owned gro­cers, has also con­tributed $20,000. Take a look:

Con­tri­bu­tions to Ini­tia­tive 1634 (so far)

$2,311,088.48 of the $2,960,000 has already been spent.

A ver­i­ta­ble army of con­sul­tants, lob­by­ists, lawyers, and pub­lic rela­tions spe­cial­ists are doing work from the cam­paign, from Perkins Coie (legal) to Blue­front Strate­gies (mar­ket­ing, cam­paign plan­ning) to the Dewey Square Group and its sub­con­trac­tors (sig­na­ture gath­er­ing and assort­ed oth­er services).

The cam­paign is being mar­ket­ed as “Yes for Afford­able Gro­ceries”, but a more hon­est name would be “Yes to Cheap High Fruc­tose Corn Syrup in a Bottle!”

NPI antic­i­pates that Big Soda will sink at least $8 mil­lion more into the cam­paign to pass I‑1634 — and pos­si­bly much more.

Coke, Pep­si, Dr Pep­per Snap­ple Group, and Red Bull all make sug­ary bev­er­ages (includ­ing their epony­mous prod­ucts as well as Sprite, Moun­tain Dew, Fan­ta, Gatorade, etc.) and have a vest­ed inter­est in keep­ing the prices of their sug­ary prod­ucts low so as to encour­age peo­ple to con­tin­ue buy­ing them.

And that’s despite the fact that Coke and Pep­si have already diver­si­fied their prod­uct lines so as to be less depen­dent on soda. As most read­ers prob­a­bly know, Coke and Pep­si are also in the busi­ness of sell­ing bot­tled water in sin­gle use con­tain­ers, which is envi­ron­men­tal­ly destruc­tive. It’s a busi­ness they’ve invest­ed a lot of mon­ey in cre­at­ing, as Annie Leonard explains in The Sto­ry of Bot­tled Water:

NPI has tak­en a posi­tion oppos­ing Ini­tia­tive 1634. Although it is des­tined to appear on the Novem­ber bal­lot thanks to the big mon­ey behind it, we urge you to decline to sign the mea­sure if asked, and to vote NO this Novem­ber. Cities and coun­ties should­n’t be pre­clud­ed from rais­ing mon­ey for pub­lic health needs just because Big Soda wants to keep prices of unhealthy sug­ary bev­er­ages as low as possible.