Part 3 (2/2)
The movie earned nearly $1 billion worldwide-the second-highest-grossing film at the time behind t.i.tanic t.i.tanic-and Coca-Cola Enterprises spokesperson John Downs called Potter the most successful campaign of the year. It was enough to spur a push to product placement in movies. c.o.ke appeared in eighty-five of them between 2001 and 2009, third behind Apple and Ford in frequency. While many were marketed to adults, several were even more conspicuously aimed at kids, including the 2005 Dream Works film Madagascar Madagascar, featuring animated zoo animals escaping from New York, as well as such preteen fare as Elf Elf, Are We There Yet? Are We There Yet?, s...o...b..-Doo s...o...b..-Doo, and the Disney live-action princess fantasy Enchanted Enchanted.
Finally, in 2002, c.o.ke made the leap to online advertising with c.o.ke Studios, an online world where users could create avatars called ”V-Egos” and put together their own music mixes with different virtual instruments. In 2007, the company followed it up with an entire branded world, CC Metro-which must look much like what Doug Ivester imagined when he envisioned the concept of a ”360-degree landscape” of c.o.ke. In this world, avatars move around an entire three-dimensional city, buying cool clothes, riding on hovercraft and skateboards, and talking with fellow fans of c.o.ke. And while they are doing all these cool things, they are surrounded by c.o.ke's advertising images-with logos on billboards, blimps, and park benches, fountains and statues in the shape of c.o.ke's hobbleskirt bottle, and various stores and restaurants where you can spend real money to buy virtual gla.s.ses and bottles of c.o.ke products. (Strangely, there are very few ads for anything but c.o.ke Cla.s.sic.) Soon after it opened, it was getting more than 100,000 visitors a month-no doubt many of them children, given the video game interface and the range of activities available.
With that kind of success reaching young audiences, schools must have seemed to c.o.ke just another avenue to ”getting them young.” But in doing so, it failed to see how cynical it seemed to sell to children who had no other choice but to spend eight hours a day in the glow of the c.o.ke machine.
Almost immediately after forming the new Public Health Advocacy Club, Jackie Domac and her students took action, attempting to persuade the school to cancel its contract with c.o.ke and implement healthier choices in the vending machines. They knew it would be difficult to convince their fellow students that the soft drinks they enjoyed were actually bad for them. after forming the new Public Health Advocacy Club, Jackie Domac and her students took action, attempting to persuade the school to cancel its contract with c.o.ke and implement healthier choices in the vending machines. They knew it would be difficult to convince their fellow students that the soft drinks they enjoyed were actually bad for them. Liquid Candy Liquid Candy had only just been published, and studies were only beginning to link soda to obesity and other health problems. Even so, the students worked to raise awareness, creating whimsical T-s.h.i.+rts and holding taste tests for organic soy milk in the cafeteria. had only just been published, and studies were only beginning to link soda to obesity and other health problems. Even so, the students worked to raise awareness, creating whimsical T-s.h.i.+rts and holding taste tests for organic soy milk in the cafeteria.
Momentum grew after Domac and her students met directly with a representative from c.o.ke's bottler, who reluctantly agreed to stock half of the slots with juice and other more healthful beverages (but only if the school accepted a 15 percent commission on those items, compared to 36 percent on soft drinks). When Domac triumphantly took a French film crew to show them the vending machines a few weeks later, she found the company had changed virtually nothing. ”I had asked them to meet us halfway, and now I just embarra.s.sed myself,” she remembers. ”That was it, they were out.” She adopted more confrontational tactics, running for and winning a spot on the parents' advisory council and bringing students in to raise the issue during meetings.
It was money, however, that eventually did the talking. Domac and her students applied for a state health grant in 2002 to serve as a model school for nutrition. When they received a windfall of $250,000, the administration agreed to cancel the deal with c.o.ke on a trial basis to see if the new strategy could work. ”You can scream all you want about how healthy beverages prevent obesity and diabetes, but unless you can show a school that it has enough money to run its programs, that's going to fall on deaf ears,” Domac says. With the new money, the students worked to get an array of juices and soy beverages into the vending machines at last, along with baked chips and trail mixes. While vending machine sales initially dipped, they eventually rose higher than before-$6,163 in 2002 versus $7,358 in 2003, according to Domac, who still keeps the figures.
Flush with their sense of victory, the student health club took the issue to a higher authority even before those numbers came in-arguing for a ban on soda in the entire Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school district in the country, with more than 700,000 students. Again, they used creativity to make their point, storming meetings dressed in necklaces of plastic fruits while performing a foot-stomping chant, ”Take Back the Snack.” ”Facts are great, but they are also quite boring,” says Domac. ”Having kids being vivacious and happy with a positive message went a long way.” The students made impa.s.sioned speeches about the new health craze at their school, at the same time marshaling data from a new UCLA study showing that 40 percent of students in the Los Angeles district were already obese.
c.o.ke waged a creative campaign of its own, threatening to pull its sponsors.h.i.+p of the district's Academic Decathlon events at the school in a blunt attempt to silence opposition. But in the end, the gra.s.sroots strategy worked: In August 2002, the Los Angeles Unified school board unanimously voted to cut their contract with c.o.ke. Starting with the 2004 school year, the district would sell no soda at all, stocking its vending machines with only milk, water, and drinks with at least 50 percent juice and no added sweeteners.
After three years of struggle, the students had won-an empowering and humbling experience. ”I've never been part of anything like that where people so young can have so much sway,” says Faisal Saleh, one of the student leaders, who is now majoring in theater arts at Santa Monica State College. ”That's something I take pride in.” The success in Los Angeles, however, was hardly the end of the battle against c.o.ke in schools-in fact, it was only the beginning. Even while c.o.ke was losing ground in California, the company soon roared back, determined not to lose out on a hard-won new market for its products at a critical time.
By the time L.A. pa.s.sed its resolution, word had already spread to other school districts, sp.a.w.ning similar resolutions in San Francisco, Sacramento, Madison, and Oakland. It wasn't just c.o.ke that stood to lose from the backlash-but Pepsi as well. The two companies, bitter rivals in the press, closed ranks to defend themselves through their trade organization, the National Soft Drink a.s.sociation. As with the initial criticism of CSPI's report, the group painted Domac and her students as misguided. ”This is like using a squirt gun to put out a forest fire,” said NSDA spokesman Sean McBride. ”The LAUSD missed an important opportunity to stem rising obesity rates by having more physical education in their schools and better nutrition education.”
That notion that ”it's the couch, not the can,” became a rallying cry for Big Soda. c.o.ke quickly launched a pilot program in Houston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta called ”Step with It!”-distributing c.o.ke-red pedometers to kids to encourage them to exercise more by taking 10,000 steps a day. The program won praise from Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson, and expanded to 250 schools around the country by 2003. Even as c.o.ke was playing nice in the media, however, it was funding studies to cast doubt on the connection between soft drinks and obesity.
Along with Tyson Chicken and Wendy's, c.o.ke reportedly ”donated” $200,000 to a new group called the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), which took the lead in ridiculing the fight against soda and other unhealthy food, all without revealing its funding. (Pepsi publicly disavowed the group.) ”There is a rush to blame soda companies that far outstrips any scientific evidence,” said CCF senior a.n.a.lyst Dan Mindus. He pointed to competing studies, one showing that soda had no effect on weight gain, another contending that it was lack of exercise that caused weight increases. What CCF doesn't advertise, of course, is who is paying for those studies. A recent review by David Ludwig-the author of the previously mentioned study on kids and soft drinks-found that beverage studies paid for by industry sources were four to eight times more likely to deny the connection between soda and weight gain than those funded by government or private sources. He makes the connection between soda and the tobacco industry, which funded studies attacking the connection between smoking and lung cancer for forty years. ”Is that happening today with the soft drink industry?” Ludwig asks. ”Only time will tell, but there certainly is a precedent.” As its name implies, CCF argues that consumers should be free to eat what they want-without the ”food police” looking over their shoulder at the dinner table. ”Their ultimate goal is to restrict our access to certain food,” says Mindus. ”If they don't believe that we are to be trusted with the decision of choosing the food we eat, how can Americans be trusted with anything?” The argument has resonance. Shouldn't Americans be free to choose what they eat and drink? And if it makes them fat, isn't that their own fault? The argument hits deep in the American psyche, evoking images of founding fathers dumping tea and the Marlboro Man bestriding the Western plains. It also evokes the spirit of free-market capitalism, which enshrines free choice as its highest value.
Ultimately, however, the argument is a cynical one-since the very success of c.o.ke and its fellow companies has given the company the ability to narrow kids' choices. In 2009 alone, c.o.ke spent $2.8 billion in advertising to push its products to the general public. And in schools, the deck is even more stacked against students, since they can choose only from a preselected array of beverages, all the while subjected to the advertis.e.m.e.nts of the exclusive brand. ”Certainly students should be taught to make healthful choices and take individual responsibility,” says Lori Dorfman, of the Berkeley Media Studies Group, who has a.n.a.lyzed the way that the soda/obesity issue has played out in the media. ”But students do not determine what is made available to them in the vending machines. It's the adults who are responsible for ensuring that schools are doing right by children in their care.”
Even so, the Coca-Cola Company appealed to ”choice” in 2001 when it staged a strategic retreat with a new school beverage policy. c.o.ke would continue to allow its products in schools but prohibit exclusive school contracts or up-front payments to school districts. ”We just don't think that schools are an appropriate venue for marketing,” said Coca-Cola America president Jeffrey Dunn during a luncheon announcement in Was.h.i.+ngton. c.o.ke received a rush of positive publicity, but there was only one problem-n.o.body bothered to tell the bottlers. Whether by design or benevolent neglect, Coca-Cola Enterprises was caught flat-footed by the announcement. A spokesperson for CCE promised that the bottlers would comply if schools stopped putting out requests for proposals. That promise lasted for all of a week-until Portland, Oregon, put out a request and Coca-Cola Enterprises ponied up a bid.
When the Los Angeles plan pa.s.sed in August 2002, CCE president John Alm appealed to his chief lobbyist and public relations head John Downs, asking, ”What is the plan?” Truth is, the bottler didn't have one. It would take ten months to declare that it was keeping exclusive contracts, even as the bottler encouraged salespeople to offer schools more choices and eliminated big up-front payments. While Alm was announcing the policy, he also produced a private video for friendly politicians calling obesity ”a war that's been declared on our company.” At the same time, CCE proactively became a chief sponsor of the National Parent Teacher a.s.sociation in June 2003 with an undisclosed contribution; Downs was placed on its board.
In partnering with teachers and parents, Big Soda emphasized the importance of the money they provided to schools. ”They are a win for the students and the schools and the taxpayer,” said the NSDA's McBride. ”I think everybody benefits as a result of these business partners.h.i.+ps.” It was a meme that was picked up by the media. A review by the Berkley Media Studies Group of news articles in 2001 and 2002 found 103 references to obesity threatening children's health but 115 references to soda sales providing money for schools.
Later a.n.a.lyses, however, showed they weren't quite the panacea they seemed. A review by Oregon nonprofit Community Health Partners.h.i.+p found contracts yielded on average only $12 to $24 per student annually-and most of that money came from commissions on purchases themselves. Another a.n.a.lysis by CSPI found that soda commissions averaged only 33 percent-meaning that schools made back only a third of each dollar students spent. The most detailed sections of the contracts, CSPI found, were those delineating just where and how the c.o.ke logo was to be displayed-with stiff penalties to schools for noncompliance.
When Coca-Cola Enterprises finally announced its own new policy at the end of 2003, it did little to change any of the existing pouring-rights contracts. According to Downs, the company would prohibit sales of soda to elementary school kids during school hours-an empty gesture, as most elementary schools didn't sell soft drinks anyway. In addition, it would encourage bottlers to voluntarily control vending machine operating hours in middle schools and high schools. As a response to the criticism against advertising to kids, it announced, it would also end the practice of distributing book covers with the c.o.ke logo (even while the vending machine signs and scoreboards stayed).
As soft drink executives hunkered down at an industry conference in New York City at the end of 2003, the mood was grim. c.o.ke's sales growth for the year was a disappointing 2 percent overall, and sales volume of Coca-Cola Cla.s.sic actually declined declined 3 percent. Then there were other problems: A young accountant recently laid off by c.o.ke, Matthew Whitley, had lashed out with allegations that c.o.ke had committed fraud in consumer tests for a new frozen c.o.ke drink at Burger King. According to Whitley, the company had hired thousands of young people to buy the drink, skewing results. Eventually c.o.ke admitted the scheme, settling for $21 million. In separate proceedings, c.o.ke's practice of ”channel stuffing”-selling more syrup to bottlers than they could sell in order to pump up c.o.ke's growth targets-finally caught up with it when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a case against the company, eventually finding that the company had made ”false and misleading statements,” though c.o.ke paid no fine. 3 percent. Then there were other problems: A young accountant recently laid off by c.o.ke, Matthew Whitley, had lashed out with allegations that c.o.ke had committed fraud in consumer tests for a new frozen c.o.ke drink at Burger King. According to Whitley, the company had hired thousands of young people to buy the drink, skewing results. Eventually c.o.ke admitted the scheme, settling for $21 million. In separate proceedings, c.o.ke's practice of ”channel stuffing”-selling more syrup to bottlers than they could sell in order to pump up c.o.ke's growth targets-finally caught up with it when the Securities and Exchange Commission opened a case against the company, eventually finding that the company had made ”false and misleading statements,” though c.o.ke paid no fine.
Far from c.o.ke's glory days in the 1990s, the picture was one of a company willing to do anything, legal or illegal, to sell more soft drinks. Nothing made the company look so bad, however, as its insensitivity on childhood obesity. In one 2003 poll in California, 92 percent of respondents declared obesity a serious problem; 65 percent blamed food and beverage company advertising as an important contributor; and 66 percent felt the best solution was tougher regulation in schools. At the soft drink industry's year-end meeting, CEO Douglas Daft directly acknowledged the issue, calling obesity the biggest challenge the industry had faced in fifty years. Giving cheer to his fellow executives, however, he a.s.sured them ”a simplistic piece of government regulation will not solve the problem,” an idea he brushed off as ”absurd and outrageous.” But that was exactly what activists were now gearing up to do.
The first anti-soda bill was submitted by longtime health advocate and state senator Deborah Ortiz in California in 2002, shortly after Jackie Domac's health cla.s.s booted c.o.ke out of Venice schools. If pa.s.sed, it would categorically ban all soda in schools K-12. Immediately, c.o.ke's lobby machine descended upon Sacramento. According to Domac, legislators would slip out the back door while she and her colleagues were waiting to meet them, later emerging in the hall talking with a c.o.ke lobbyist. At the same time, a host of industry-paid experts testified against the bill on nutritional grounds (including one nutritionist representing CCF who did not disclose his affiliation). In the end, the bill pa.s.sed, but only after being watered down to apply solely to elementary and middle schools, exempting high schools. That effectively gutted the bill, since most soda in California was sold just in high schools anyway. was submitted by longtime health advocate and state senator Deborah Ortiz in California in 2002, shortly after Jackie Domac's health cla.s.s booted c.o.ke out of Venice schools. If pa.s.sed, it would categorically ban all soda in schools K-12. Immediately, c.o.ke's lobby machine descended upon Sacramento. According to Domac, legislators would slip out the back door while she and her colleagues were waiting to meet them, later emerging in the hall talking with a c.o.ke lobbyist. At the same time, a host of industry-paid experts testified against the bill on nutritional grounds (including one nutritionist representing CCF who did not disclose his affiliation). In the end, the bill pa.s.sed, but only after being watered down to apply solely to elementary and middle schools, exempting high schools. That effectively gutted the bill, since most soda in California was sold just in high schools anyway.
Over the next few years, the California experience would be repeated over and over in other states, with c.o.ke leading the way to kill anti-soda bills. ”When it came to the two major companies, Coca-Cola stood out as the particularly bad actor,” says Michele Simon, head of the Center for Informed Food Choices and author of Appet.i.te for Profit Appet.i.te for Profit. ”They were just nefarious and nasty in their tactics, sending teams of lobbyists to state capitals to lobby hard against the bills.”
The most notorious example of c.o.ke's lobbying was in Connecticut, where legislators introduced the most sweeping anti-junk food bill to date in 2005, proposing a complete ban on selling anything but water, milk, and juice during school hours. For this battle, c.o.ke and Pepsi spent a combined $250,000 on lobbying, c.o.ke paying $80,000 up front and an additional $8,000 a month to hire Sullivan and LeShane, the most influential lobbyist in the state. Patricia LeShane, in fact, was a large contributor and campaign advisor to Connecticut governor Jodi Rell.
”It's not a level playing field,” says Simon. ”Here we are doing cute things like putting sugar in a bag to show how much is in a can of c.o.ke, and meanwhile, c.o.ke is having these closed-door meetings making deals over campaign contributions. These multinational companies have many times more over the resources than the average mother or teacher or nutrition advocate.” In the debate over the bill, lawyers for c.o.ke, which had the majority of pouring-rights contracts in the state, selectively shared revenue data with legislators in opposition. The debate in the House was the longest in the Connecticut legislature in 2005, stretching for eight hours, during which time opponents, according to The New York Times The New York Times, ”derided their colleagues for second-guessing local superintendents and school boards”; some even reminisced about painful times when their parents had denied them candy as children. Pus.h.i.+ng the situation to the point of absurdity, a ”well-stocked” cooler of c.o.ke mysteriously appeared in the Democratic caucus room on the night of the vote.
Lost in the debate was the support of 70 percent of the public, according to one poll, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, the state PTA, and other public-interest groups. Once again, the bill pa.s.sed, but not without a provision allowing sales in high schools. The biggest shock, however, came when Connecticut governor Jodi Rell vetoed the bill, accusing it of ”undermin[ing] the control and responsibility of parents with school-aged children.” The justification was ironic, to say the least, given the lack of control parents and teachers had over the exclusive beverage contracts.
Even while, for the time being, it held the line against the onslaught of anti-soda legislation, c.o.ke was reeling from the suddenness of the backlash against soft drinks-not only in the United States but in Europe as well. The United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency was already making noises about binding regulations against soft drinks; and in France, lawmakers voted to ban all vending machines from elementary and middle schools in the summer of 2004, forcing companies to remove them entirely by the end of the school year. Back in the United States, CCE's John Downs admitted to The Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution The Atlanta Journal-Const.i.tution that the company was blindsided by the attack. ”Clearly we are playing catch up,” he said. that the company was blindsided by the attack. ”Clearly we are playing catch up,” he said.
By late 2004, however, industry began to formulate a line of defense, not just in the back rooms of state legislatures, but in its public image as well. For starters, the National Soft Drink a.s.sociation changed its name to the American Beverage a.s.sociation ”to better reflect the expanded range of nonalcoholic beverages the industry produces.” Shortly afterward, the group's president of fifteen years resigned, putting in charge a new director, Susan Neely.
Most recently a PR exec in the Department of Homeland Security, Neely had previously created the ”Harry and Louise” ads that torpedoed the proposed health-care legislation during the early years of the Clinton administration. Now she took the helm specifically to deal with the obesity crisis. She laid out an immediate new strategy: simultaneously denying soda's role in causing obesity and presenting industry as part of the solution. ”The industry thinks [obesity] is a real concern and something we as a country need to address,” she said. ”What we are concerned about is when state legislators or anyone else tries to leap to quick solutions to a complex problem.”
At the same time, a new white knight rode in to rescue c.o.ke itself. Since Goizueta died and Ivester was pushed out, the company had drifted aimlessly under the leaders.h.i.+p of CEO Douglas Daft. Buffeted by the obesity crisis, he turned the company away from sugary soft drinks, emphasizing other brands such as Powerade and the new diet drink c.o.ke Zero. In March 2004, c.o.ke created the Beverage Inst.i.tute for Health and Wellness, a new organization with an Orwellian name, whose mission was to promote ”global health and nutrition.” The new inst.i.tute sponsored a conference in Mexico City that fall to explore the ways in which sugar might be nutritionally beneficial. But that did little to restore investor confidence. While PepsiCo's stock rose 74 percent, c.o.ke's fell 28 percent during Daft's stewards.h.i.+p. Morgan Stanley's Bill Pecoriello, the dean of beverage a.n.a.lysts, predicted stagnation in the U.S. soft drink market for the next five years, writing that ”the glory days of the big ma.s.s-marketed soft drink brands are probably over.”
c.o.ke's board had had enough. By the middle of 2004, it had quietly pushed Daft out. Amid intense speculation, the man who emerged to take his place was Neville Isdell, a thirty-five-year veteran of the company who had retired after being twice pa.s.sed over for the top job. A patrician-looking man of Irish descent, Isdell had grown up in Zambia and studied social work before deciding-as he put it-that he could ”help more people by working for Coca-Cola than I would be able to individually as a social worker.” From the moment he arrived, he made his message clear: The future of c.o.ke lay not overseas or in health beverages, but in the core of the brand-carbonated soft drinks, and in its core markets-the United States and Europe.
Isdell predicted it would take eighteen to twenty-four months to turn around the company's fortunes-a remarkably accurate prediction in retrospect. ”I came back to the Coca-Cola Company to make sure that we are the leading growth company in our industry,” he said, reiterating on another occasion: ”Regardless of what the skeptics may think, I know that carbonated soft drinks can grow.” Almost immediately, he committed an extra $400 million to marketing and innovation, mostly for cola drinks. In public appearances, he adopted an almost identical tack to the ABA's Neely-denying soft drinks' role in the obesity epidemic, while at the same time offering up the industry as part of the solution to the problem. ”Carbonated soft drinks are going to be carriers of health and wellness benefits,” he a.s.sured a.n.a.lysts in a November 2004 conference call. At a food industry conference, he added without irony: ”Healthier consumers are going to be good for us. . . . They will grow older, healthier, wealthier, and hopefully therefore able to buy more from us. Which at the end of the day, let's face it, is our goal.”
In the meantime, the juggernaut of anti-soda legislation continued to roll over statehouses. By this time, Chicago and New York had joined Los Angeles and Philadelphia in banning soda on the city level. The first hole in the dike keeping sugar-sweetened soda in high schools, however, started at a small middle school in New Jersey. In April 2005, students at the East Hampton Middle School boycotted food from their cafeteria, demanding they receive healthier options. A few months later, New Jersey pa.s.sed the first state junk food ban with a ban of soft drinks in high schools. The soft drink companies got together to debate new guidelines, emerging in August with rules nearly identical to those c.o.ke had pushed all along-no sugar soda in elementary schools; no soda in middle schools during the day; and half non-soda choices in vending machines in high schools.
But that wasn't enough to stave off soda's biggest defeat yet. Three years after California's anti-soda bill went down in defeat, new governor and former bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger championed a new bill to victory that included a blanket ban on all soda in schools-including even diet drinks. When Jackie Domac heard the news, she was ecstatic. ”I was very, very happy because I felt like my students' efforts had really come to fruition,” she says. Her only disappointment was that the law included a long phase-in period; schools wouldn't be required to comply until July 2009.
No Sundblom Santa Claus could cheer the c.o.ke faithful when it got the news just before Christmas 2005 that PepsiCo had for the first time ever pa.s.sed c.o.ke in total market capitalization-$98.4 billion to $97.7 billion. Much of that rise was based on Pepsi's food divisions; c.o.ke was still the undisputed leader in selling soda. At least there was a bright spot with the first inkling that Isdell's strategy paid off. The company saw a 4 percent increase in all products, including a 2 percent rise in carbonated drinks in the last quarter. ”There is growth still in carbonated soft drinks and we have demonstrated that,” crowed Isdell.
Emboldened by the rising tide against soft drinks, however, activists were preparing for their endgame. Finally, they had a plan to make Big Soda into the next Big Tobacco and turn the c.o.ke polar bears into Joe Camel. They were going to sue.
The window outside d.i.c.k Daynard's office at Boston's Northeastern University still says ”Tobacco Control Research Project.” Inside, the decor includes several antique tin cigarette advertis.e.m.e.nts (”Chesterfield-They outside d.i.c.k Daynard's office at Boston's Northeastern University still says ”Tobacco Control Research Project.” Inside, the decor includes several antique tin cigarette advertis.e.m.e.nts (”Chesterfield-They Satisfy Satisfy!”) and a stuffed Joe Camel atop a bookcase stuffed with binders labeled ”Philip Morris,” ”Brown & Williamson,” and ”R. J. Reynolds,” along with bound back issues of the Tobacco Industry Litigation Reporter Tobacco Industry Litigation Reporter. Daynard has been called the ”intellectual G.o.dfather of tobacco litigation,” and that's by his detractors. He was one of the original lawyers behind the lawsuits against the tobacco industry for fraudulent practices in the 1990s. That campaign succeeded in 1998 with a $250 billion settlement by the tobacco companies, who admitted they'd lied about the addictiveness of their products, followed five years later by a global tobacco treaty to limit cigarette sales overseas.
In the summer of 2005, however, he was pursuing a new quarry-soda. ”The number of a.n.a.logies [is] very surprising,” says Daynard, now director of something called the Public Health Advocacy Inst.i.tute (PHAI). ”You are dealing with an addictive product sold to kids, where, if not the addiction, at least the taste is acquired at a young age. You are dealing with a product that, at least when initially produced, was not understood to be deleterious, yet as the evidence kept coming in, companies kept marketing it and stonewalling.”
The idea of suing the soda companies over the issue of childhood obesity had been percolating since a conference organized by PHAI in 2003. As long as the anti-obesity advocates were forced to go after soda one school or one state at a time, they reasoned, c.o.ke and Pepsi could stone-wall indefinitely. If they were going to succeed, they'd have to speak the language companies understood-hitting their bottom lines with legal damages, or besmirching their brands so badly they'd be forced to settle.
Shortly after the confab, one of the lawyers, John Banzhaf, threatened to sue the Seattle School Board if it renewed its contract with c.o.ke, but eventually backed down. It was one thing to brand multinational corporations as greedy, but it was simply too risky to go after a school that was already hurting for cash. It took another two years for lawyers to get up the courage to go after those they argued were really calling the shots: the companies themselves. ”I look at c.o.ke and Pepsi as the Colombian cartel, the bottlers are the middlemen, the school is the one who is actually selling the drugs,” reasons Stephen Gardner, litigation director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, whic
<script>