Fixing teen smoking and child obesity the BP way

SUPPOSE YOU HAD TO CHOOSE BETWEEN A PINA COLADA AND A GINA KOLATA? What would you do?

Now, this absurd question is only slightly less preposterous than an opinion piece in the Sunday Week In Review NYT written by Gina Kolata, a NYT "science reporter." The article is titled, "Whether A Child Lights Up or Chows Down." The piece, such as it is, cites "experts" who debate the relative demerits of both teen smoking and child obesity. They conclude (wait for it) that both are bad.
But before he could even get into the gristle of the article (for there was, sadly, little meat), Ned was irked by the silly use of directional suffixes-- you know, 'sign OFF ON,' 'chow DOWN', 'light UP,' or Ned's favorite blood pressure increaser, 'listen UP.' But let that pass.
The topic of the article was encapsulated in the first sentence "If you had to choose one public health problem to attack, which would it be: teenage smoking or childhood obesity?"
To which Ned immediately replied, why should he have to choose? This is what the logicians call a false choice.
Both are severe health problems and both could be easily addressed.
Let's apply the Chicago-style BP shakedown of the Obama administration (for whom Ned voted) to the problem of teen smoking. Now, smoking kills 400,000 people a year in this country. Philip Morris International alone pays $4 billion in dividends. Ned would apply the BP shakedown to PMI, but in this case you could end teen smoking and save hundreds of thousands of people and their families untold misery.
One could raise the price of cigarettes to confiscatory levels, ban their use outside the home, and prohibit tobacco companies in this country from paying dividends until they pay the entire cost of smoking related health problems.
Now let's apply these methods to childhood obesity, which is tied to an epidemic of child diabetes, and results in tens of billions in unneeded health costs annually..
No manufacturer of junk food would be permitted to pay a dividend until they withdraw any food the Surgeon General and/or FDA determines to be a "material contributor" to childhood obesity. This would include any and all sugary drinks. Childhood obesity could be further addressed by restoring activity to grade schools, introducing healthy school lunches to replace the toxic fare presently on offer, taxing sodas, banning sugary drinks and 'snacks' from schools (a no-brainer, to Ned) and educating parents on the toxicity of most of what passes for industrially produced food in this country, among other things.
Ned wonders how Kolata got to write such a non-article in the first place. One thinks of all the positive, useful pieces that could have occupied that space, read by millions of people. Because Ned cannot think of a better way to waste a quarter of a page in the Sunday Week In Review section that a piece like this, unless it is to write pieces on the LeBron James "story" or the latest item in the sad saga of Lindsay Lohan.
Oops, they did that too.