Why the Soda Industry Is the Big Tobacco of Our Times | Alternet
▻https://www.alternet.org/books/why-soda-industry-big-tobacco-our-times
Even this brief description demonstrates that the soda business involves many companies with a vested interest in its success. The stakeholders in the soda business include the soda companies themselves, of course, but also those that supply sugar and other raw ingredients, make syrup, produce carbon dioxide, fabricate the cans and bottles, can and bottle the products, make dispensers and vending machines, deliver ingredients, and supply and service the factories, dispensers, and vending machines. Sodas help support the restaurants, convenience stores, grocery stores, sports facilities, and movie theaters that sell drinks to customers, as well as the advertising agencies employed to market the products and the media venues in which advertisements appear. A seemingly infinite number of individuals, nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, health and environmental groups, and business associations benefit from soda company philanthropy, partnerships, and marketing. Because all of these entities depend on sodas for their livelihoods or function, they constitute an unusually wide-ranging support system for Big Soda. Indeed, one of Coca-Cola’s guiding rules is to ensure that everyone who touches its products along the way to the consumer should make money doing so. This is a business strategy guaranteed to ensure deep and lasting devotion.
In the United States, many of the companies engaged in beverage manufacturing belong to the industry trade group, the American Beverage Association (ABA). This association’s role, among others, is to promote the value of its member companies to the U.S. economy. The soda industry, it says, “has a direct economic impact of $141.22 billion, provides more than 233,000 jobs, and helps to support hundreds of thousands more that depend, in part, on beverage sales for their livelihoods.” Moreover, says the ABA, the companies and their employees pay more than $14 billion in state taxes and nearly $23 billion in federal business and income taxes, and contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable causes. Although the ABA does not say so directly, its point is that any public health campaign to reduce soda intake will cost jobs and harm the economy. You may recall that cigarette companies set the standard for use of such arguments. But in promoting the value of their industries to the economy, neither considers the economic or personal costs of the diseases their products may cause.
