San Francisco seeks fee on stores selling sodas

By Adam Tanner

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco stores selling high-calorie sodas should pay millions of dollars a year to offset the health-care costs related to obesity, the city's mayor said on Monday.

"This is not just hippy-dippy, left-coast, granola stuff," Gavin Newsom said about his proposal to encourage people to drink less Coca-Cola, Pepsi and other soft drinks. "There is a direct correlation between caloric sweetened beverages and obesity."

"What we are doing is proposing a fee against the supermarkets and hypermarkets."

The 6-foot-3-inch tall Democratic mayor, who appears fit at 198 lbs, said the city pays $192 million per yearon obesity-related health care costs, of which some $54 million is linked to sodas.

The plan, outlined during an interview at City Hall, seeks to raise to between $1.7 million and $7.1 million a year for anti-obesity programs by having stores pay between hundreds and thousands of dollars a year each.

"It doesn't hinder or break the knees of these big retailers," Newsom said.

Officials at soft-drink companies Pepsico and Coca-Cola did not immediately return calls for comment but the mayor said he expected strong resistance and lobbying on the issue.

"The fear is ... that as we go, so goes the rest of the nation," he said.