First smokes, now Cokes

GET READY for the next mass-tort crusade: protecting our kids from the ravages of Big Cola. According to news reports, a group of lawyers is gearing up to file lawsuits that will seek to blame Coke, Pepsi and others for obesity, tooth decay and other childhood health ailments. An article in the Boston Globe Magazine has called it part of a "national legal movement to make soft drinks the next tobacco." Instead of tar and nicotine, we'll be hearing about corn sweeteners and caffeine; maybe Dr. Pepper can stand in as the new Joe Camel.

Ridiculous? More like inevitable. For some time, a noisy campaign has been underway to portray the food and beverage industry as the villain in the nation's ongoing battle with the waistline. Without the snack hucksters' machinations, it seems, we'd all eat raw bell peppers and be reed thin.

Backed by "progressive" foundations, nutrition advocates are demanding a national obesity policy aimed at changing our collective diet, by force of law if necessary -- or quite possibly by force of litigation. As one advocate, Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, put it: "If someone is saying that a 64-ounce soda at 7-Eleven contributed to obesity, that person should have his day in court."

That brings us to Northeastern University law professor and associate dean Richard Daynard, point man in the forthcoming courtroom onslaught against fizzy drinks. Long quoted in the media as a cheerleader for tobacco lawsuits, Daynard has now set out to assemble a legal strike force to file obesity actions. He wants to duplicate the success of the tobacco campaign, whose strategies included invoking "the children" and launching scores of suits on novel legal theories in hopes that one would stick. The litigation culminated in the 1998 settlement in which cigarette makers agreed to alter marketing practices, pay oodles to state governments (financed by hiking cigarette prices) and -- not incidentally -- fork over upward of $10 billion to the lawyers who had organized the suits.

The first of the new soft-drink suits -- set for filing in Massachusetts over the sale of soda in school vending machines -- has been delayed, for a comical reason. Daynard says that it has taken longer than expected to line up the right Bay State family to serve as client, even though his allies have placed newspaper ads asking parents to step forward. (Shouldn't he be pretending, at least, that aggrieved victims of Big Cola are pounding on his door, eager to sue?)