City of San Francisco cites science in asking court to dismiss American Beverage Association lawsuit challenging sugary-beverage ordinances.
The way Jim O’Hara sees it, it’s just like the lyrics of that 1960s song: “I fought the law and the law won.”
“Big Soda can’t fight the science. The science is clear and Big Soda’s gonna lose,” said the director of health promotion policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer-advocate organization based in Washington, D.C.
That’s the position of the City and County of San Francisco, which on Sept. 8 asked the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California to dismiss the American Beverage Association’s July 24 lawsuit that said two of the city’s ordinances should be “struck down”: Ordinance No. 100-15 and Ordinance No. 98-15.
In its response to the ABA, the city noted that despite nutrition scientists’ often-changing views on such foods as grains, dietary fat, high-cholesterol fare, salt, margarine, pasta, white potatoes, eggs, nuts and iceberg lettuce, none have suggested Americans increase their consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages or changed their longstanding view that significant numbers of Americans over-consume sugar-sweetened beverages.