MOSCOW (Sputnik) – Last month, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance requiring health warnings in sugar beverage advertisements on city billboards, buses, transit shelters, posters and stadiums.
Under the new law, which was passed unanimously, the ads should include a statement saying "WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar(s) contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay." The law also prohibits soda advertising on San Francisco city property.
"The city is free to try to persuade consumers to share its opinions about sugar-sweetened beverages," the lawsuit, filed on Friday, says as quoted by the newspaper.
The American Beverage Association, jointed by the California State Outdoor Advertising Association and the California Retailers Association claimed, however, that the new ordinances approved by San Francisco officials are limiting freedom of expression.
"…the city is trying to ensure that there is no free marketplace of ideas, but instead only a government-imposed, one-sided public ‘dialogue’ on the topic — in violation of the First Amendment," the associations said in their lawsuit.
BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) said in a July 22 report that a new research study has found that a daily serving of sugary beverages increase a person’s risk of type 2 diabetes by 13 percent over 10 years. This could lead to 2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes in the United States between 2010 and 2020, according to the BMJ report.
The American Beverage Association argued in a statement that the BMJ studies were not actual clinical trials and thus the conclusions presented in the report could not be treated as direct proof of a link between sugary drink consumption and type 2 diabetes.
