The San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved three measures concerning sugar-sweetened beverages yesterday, one of which requires a warning label on advertisements for sugary drinks throughout the city.
The label will read: “WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. This is a message from the City and County of San Francisco.”
The other measures restrict the sale or distribution of sugary drinks by the city or its contractors and issue a ban on advertisements for those types of beverages on public property.
The trio of laws were co-sponsored by supervisors Scott Weiner, Malia Cohen, Eric Mar and John Avalon, and come in the wake of a so-called “soda tax” ballot measure that failed to pass in the city’s election last November.
So will the new warning label law be effective in helping the city cut back on consumption of these high-calorie beverages?
Not exactly, independent experts say.
That’s because warning labels will appear on billboards and buses, not on the bottles or cans, said John Delacruz, an advertising expert at San Jose State University.
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“On the product itself is where it does tend to have most impact,” he told NBC Bay Area.
A multi-pronged approach to advertising, which often includes television ads, warning labels on products, and education in schools could be much more successful, Delacruz added. But it could also take time, he added.
“Look how long it took for smoking,” he said.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, the smoking rate among adults in the United States was over 40 percent when Congress passed legislation requiring warning labels on tobacco products in the 1960’s. These labels, in addition to anti-smoking ads on television and in magazines and newspapers, were deployed over several decades, and eventually led to a drop in the smoking rate from 25 percent in 1997 to less than 18 percent today.
Delacruz emphasized that the San Francisco soda campaign could have an impact, but the city will need to go beyond mere warning labels and implement other strategies. He added that most successful campaigns, including those against drug use and drunk driving, centered on education in schools.
“So I think it’s a good start,” he said. “Is it effective? That’s still to be seen. All the research that’s been done on the effectiveness of warning labels on advertisements and products…it’s pretty inconclusive.”
