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To Block California Soda Taxes, Companies Paid for ‘Black Panther’ Tickets, Fancy Dinners
by Samantha Young
Los Angeles Times
April 7, 2019
Dinners at an expensive restaurant in Maui — with ocean views. Tickets to professional sports games. A free screening of “Black Panther” at a Sacramento IMAX theater. And a $250,000 donation to a group that funds the governor’s travel.
That’s just a sampling of the $11.8 million that soft drink companies and their lobbyists spent at the state and local levels in the last two years in California to block proposals such as taxing sugary beverages and slapping health warnings on their drinks, a California Healthline analysis found.
“They exercise extraordinary influence in this building,” state Sen. Bill Monning (D-Carmel) said of the industry. “We don’t underestimate the power of the opposition.”
Read more at https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-soda-tax-law-influence-20190407-story.html
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