SANTA CRUZ, California — A California surfing idyll may determine whether soda is poised to go the way of Big Tobacco, banished to the outskirts of modern consumption habits.
Over the past decade, soda companies have invested tens of millions of dollars fighting targeted excise taxes from Mexico to the Philippines, policies developed as part of a global push to make sugary drinks harder to access with the goal of reducing obesity. But a municipal initiative in Santa Cruz could next month reopen the conflict not far from where it first began: at the local ballot in another Northern California college town.
In 2014, Berkeley passed the first modern soda tax over an onslaught of spending from Coke, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper. The tax generated millions of dollars in funding for community health programs, and became a model for other American cities — from neighboring Oakland and San Francisco to Philadelphia and Denver — to adopt similar taxes of their own…