Statement by CEO of Coca Cola James Quincy 4/01/2021
Our approach has always been to work with stakeholders to advocate for positive change, and we will continue to engage with legislators, advocacy groups, business leaders and others to work towards ensuring broad access to voting is available to every eligible voter in our home state.
We want to be crystal clear and state unambiguously that we are disappointed in the outcome of the Georgia voting legislation. Throughout Georgia’s legislative session we provided feedback to members of both legislative chambers and political parties, opposing measures in the bills that would diminish or deter access to voting. Voting is a foundational right in America, and we have long championed efforts to make it easier to vote.
Additionally, our focus is now on supporting federal legislation that protects voting access and addresses voter suppression across the country. We all have a duty to protect everyone’s right to vote, and we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the U.S.
Later Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey escalated his criticism against recently passed voting laws in Georgia, saying he wants to be “crystal clear and state unambiguously that we are disappointed” in the legislation.In a new statement released Thursday, Quincey said that Coke, which is headquartered in Atlanta, has “long championed efforts to make it easier to vote” and has previously opposed legislation that “would diminish or deter access to voting.” “Our focus is now on supporting federal legislation that protects voting access and addresses voter suppression across the country,” Quincey said. “We all have a duty to protect everyone’s right to vote, and we will continue to stand up for what is right in Georgia and across the US.”
It would be hard to find a person who does not like Coca Cola. I remember in the ’50s collecting glass bottles from the sides of the roads and from trash cans on the way home from school. It was easy to find enough bottles (at 2 cents for the small ones and 5 cents for the large ones) to have enough money to buy a soda, candy bar or small toy at the local soda shop. My choice was very often a vanilla coke. The soda was served in a metal cone shaped vessel lined with a paper cone. First Bill (the proprietor) would add a squirt of Coke syrup, then a squirt of vanilla syrup (two if I asked nicely) and then the carbonated water from the spigot. It was absolutely delicious!!! Sometimes I would have a chocolate or cherry coke which were also delicious but my go to was the vanilla. At the time the coke syrup contained cocaine. My mother strictly prohibited us from drinking soda at the time except when we went out to dinner at a restaurant, which happened less than once a year for our family or when we were throwing up. She believed coke or ginger ale helped fix sick stomach. I enjoyed coke at the soda shop for about 4 years until I turned 11 and we moved out of town. Later my mother did give in to the soda craze and had coke in the house but that was when I was a teenager. Although I do drink diet coke to this day (when I have certain meals, particularly spaghetti or pizza) I generally drink less than 10 sodas a year. Why? Because bottled or canned sodas just pale against the delicious sodas Bill made at the soda fountain. I am thankful that I am not among the millions of people worldwide who are addicted to Coca Cola products!!!
So how does this relate to CEO James Quincey’s statements on voting rights? I am not even going to argue whether or not the new Georgia voting legislation does or does not suppress voting rights. It is evident if you read the legislation that it doesn’t suppress voting access or reduce voting rights and does provide similar or more voter access to voting than most other States’ voting laws do. Why I was flabbergasted by Coca Cola’s statement is that it came from a company that produces products that have absolutely no nutritional value, contain sugar as their main ingredient and are addictive. Besides the major health issues associated with children and adults drinking the large quantities of sugar in regular sodas, there are questions related to the ingestion of large quantities of the sugar substitutes used in their diet drinks, including questions whether they cause cancer. To make it worse the caffeine contained in the products make them addictive. Bottom line Coca Cola sells products that contain ingredients that are detrimental to people’s health and makes them addictive so that the people drinking them have a difficult time when they want to stop drinking them. Don’t tell me you don’t know someone who is addicted to Coca Cola products. It even appears to me that the number of people addicted to these products is getting worse. I see younger people using them as their caffeine drink in the morning. At least with coffee you control the quantity of sugar or sugar substitute you add. Finally, Coca Cola has no problem marketing their products to the same people that they fein to be concerned about their voting rights. I am sorry but I just don’t see how a company that is at least partially responsible for an epidemic of diabetes and obesity in the country and other diseases related to excess ingestion of sugar has any credibility when they attack the Georgia Legislature’s voting laws. They don’t and what’s even worse is they didn’t even read the Legislation. Nothing about Coca Cola’s products is redeeming.. But what I wouldn’t do to have one of those vanilla cokes from Bill’s soda fountain.