I know I have touched on this before, but the jury award in California last week to the dying smoker is just so ridiculous I felt compelled to revisit the topic.

The smoking thing has been way out of control for a long time now, but this latest judgment defies comprehension.

Everybody knows - I know, kids know, teen-agers know, adults know, senior citizens know, probably some of the brighter of our pets know - that smoking is bad for you.

No matter.

Comes now Richard Boeken, who got lung cancer after smoking Marlboros for 40 or so years.

He tells a jury - and this is a pivotal issue in his case - that he didn't know, DIDN'T KNOW, that smoking was bad for him until the mid 1990s.

Was this guy living in a cave? I understand he is gravely ill and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but come on, people. Who in their right mind could believe that? They started putting warning labels on the things in the 1960s. I was a kid during those years. Back then we called them cancer sticks and coffin nails, and Boeken is 10 years older than I am.

But apparently a jury of Boeken's peers believed it because that was his sworn testimony. And it was upon that sworn testimony that they ordered the Phillip Morris tobacco company to pay him the tidy sum of $3 billion.

That's $3,000,000,000. OK, that exceeds the gross national product of most Third World countries.

That, according to a Scripps Howard editorial, is more than the average American would earn in 3,000 lifetimes.

So basically this guy commits perjury and gets handed enough dough to buy a company the size of Zimmer for his trouble.

Of course the case is being appealed and that award likely will be reduced. But I think we are treading in some dangerous water regardless of the eventual outcome.

Lots of people don't really care about the damage awards against tobacco companies because, well, tobacco companies are dirt, you see.

The tobacco companies deserve it, you see.

And frankly, it's not like I own any tobacco stock or tobacco acreage. I guess I really don't care what happens to the tobacco companies either.

What concerns me is this all-too-common practice of suing things we don't like out of existence, even though those things are perfectly legal and are enjoyed by a significant number of our fellow Americans.

Here's something interesting to consider.

Also last week, at the very same time that Boeken was figuring out what to do with what was left of his $3 billion after his attorneys got their cut, the findings of a study were released.

This study was conducted by the Rand Institute and published in Public Health, a British journal.

Researchers interviewed more than 9,500 adults.

First, the study showed that obese people have far more health problems than either smokers or heavy drinkers.

Second, the study showed that three out of five adults are overweight and one in four is obese.

Hmmmm.

Who can we sue now?

Maybe it's time the fast food places start putting warning labels on their burger wrappers.

Of course, even if they did, half a lifetime later somebody would say, "I didn't know eating five Big Mac¨ value meals a week was bad for me."

That's absurd, you say, nobody forced them to eat that way and gain weight.

But wait, is it absurd? What about all that marketing? Were the fast food people being completely honest with us? Did they warn us about all the health consequences of a fat- and sugar- laden diet?

And that advertising.

They target our kids. They even offer them little toys to get them in the door. Some of them even have little playrooms as an added attraction.

And once those little tykes taste those burgers, fries and shakes, they're hooked. They're addicted. Doomed to a lifetime of poor eating habits.

And it's not just the fat food folks. How about ice cream makers, potato chip makers, doughnut makers, chocolate makers, candy makers and soda pop makers?

Beware, food consumers. Beware the rapacious food sellers enticing you into obesity.

A growing percentage of Americans will end up fat and sick because of these evil companies.

Don't let them fool you. They're not selling food. They're selling heart disease, diabetes, arterial disease and stroke.

Remember the study, now. Fat people on average have more health problems than smokers or heavy drinkers.

And with the percentage of Americans who are overweight hovering around 60 percent, it's easy to see there is a considerable amount of weight-related illness looming on our health horizon.

We hear about the heavy cost of tobacco in the health care system. What about the cost of fat in the health care system?

When someone overeats and gets fat, we don't really say much about it. I guess we think that would be mean.

But we have absolutely no problem being mean to smokers. We make them huddle outdoors in the dead of winter. We segregate them.

Then, later on, when they get sick, we reward them for their behavior. We blame the tobacco companies.

With legions of people suffering fat-related health problems in this country, how long can it be before overeaters start filing fat suits? [[In-content Ad]]