A move in the D.C. Council to impose a new tax on sodas and sugary drinks is drawing pushback from a powerful and well-funded opponent: the soda industry.

Over the weekend, some residents reported finding door-hangers from the “Alliance for an Affordable D.C.” arguing that the proposed excise tax would make the already expensive city even less affordable for some of its residents. Distributors would have to pay an additional 1.5 cents per ounce on sweetened drinks ranging from soda to iced tea to sports drinks like Gatorade. Fine print at the bottom of the door hanger reveals the group behind the campaign is the American Beverage Association.

“Why is the D.C. Council trying to raise our taxes again when we have a budget surplus?” reads the two-sided door-hanger. “As housing costs continue to rise and people are forced out of their neighborhoods, this tax will hurt residents and working families who are already struggling to make ends meet.” The door flyer states the new tax would increase the cost of a two-liter bottle of soda by a dollar, to $3.20, an estimate disputed councilmembers behind the proposal. 

The advocacy campaign against the proposal is the opening salvo in what’s expected to be an expensive effort to derail the proposed tax.

The beverage industry has mounted aggressive and well-funded fights against soda taxes in a number of jurisdictions. In Philadelphia, which imposed a soda tax in 2017, the American Beverage Association spent millions of dollars on ad buys alone, and waged its battle through Philadelphians Against the Grocery Tax, an organization it created. Since then, a new industry-funded group — Ax the Beverage Tax — has tried to get the tax rescinded.

It’s not uncommon for large industry groups to counter tax proposals they oppose with campaigns designed to look like local grassroots efforts. The Alliance for an Affordable D.C. is funded by the beverage association and led by Carrie Kohns, a communications consultant who worked as chief of staff to Rep. Karen Bass (D-Calif.) and former D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty. In a statement, the group said a new soda tax would hit small businesses and low-income residents the hardest.

“A beverage tax will hurt working families and small, local business in the District by raising grocery bills, costing sales and risking jobs. District businesses like grocery stores, bodegas, corner stores and restaurants have joined together to inform people about the negative effect this tax would have on families, stores and workers already struggling to make ends meet,” it said.

Proponents of the tax — which has support from nine members of the D.C. Council — say the prevalence of sodas and sugary drinks disproportionately hurts minority and low-income communities in D.C., and that increasing the costs of those drinks could help minimize their consumption and fund programs promoting healthy food and early education.

The tax is expected to bring in $21 million a year — although Philadelphia saw less money than expected in the first year of its tax. The new measure would replace the recent increase on the sales tax on sodas and sugary drinks — up to 8 percent, from 6 percent — which some say doesn’t do enough to change consumer behavior.

“Our message is incredibly strong,” said Councilmember Brianne Nadeau (D-Ward 1), who wrote the bill. “We know the beverage industry is exacerbating health disparities in our communities. They’re targeting communities of color. These drinks are a real risk to kids. We have some very angry people from East of the River who are seeing children die due to poor health outcomes.”

Research on the efficacy of soda taxes has generally been mixed. A paper published by Mathematica last month found that in the first year after Philadelphia and Oakland imposed soda taxes, overall consumption of sodas and other sugary drinks went down for adults — but not kids. And it determined that people who traveled to other jurisdictions to do their shopping were more likely to buy their soft drinks at that time.

Critics also say soda taxes are largely regressive and an unstable source of revenue for government programs.

“Those whose beverage choices consist of LaCroix, natural juices and White Claw have nothing to fear from a soda tax,” Guy Bentley of the libertarian Reason Foundation wrote in The Washington Post last week. “But small businesses in underserved communities and poorer residents will again bear the brunt of a policy that has been universally discredited but whose advocates refuse to accept the results.”

But Nadeau largely rejects that argument.

“Nobody has to drink sugary beverages,” she said. “If I was raising taxes on something that people need to survive, it would be a different conversation.”

The Alliance for an Affordable D.C. did not disclose details on how it will fight this new version of a soda tax, but along with the door-hangers, some residents have reported receiving phone surveys concerning the council bill.

The Alliance did not respond to questions on whether it had commissioned the survey, but the beverage association did pay for similar polling in Philadelphia earlier this year. In Philadelphia, it not only tried to stop the tax from passing to begin with, but then shifted to funding the campaigns of lawmakers who pledged to undo it. 

This isn’t the first fight soda producers have waged in D.C. —  they successfully derailed a proposed soda tax in 2010. Nadeau says the beverage industry’s opposition is “completely expected,” but adds that she thinks the bill has widespread support among community groups.

“I was willing to introduce the bill because I knew there was a strong grassroots coalition in place that would continue to support it as it moved through the legislative process,” she said. “That is one lesson learned in other cities: not having that depth and breadth of support in community puts the future of the bill at risk.”

This story originally appeared on WAMU.