THE SALE OF CIGARETTES IS THE HEART AND SOUL OF THE WAR ON SMOKING

There is big news in the War on Smoking. The U.S. Justice Department has
filed a lawsuit against the cigarette industry, boldly charging that the
industry was lying - and KNEW it was lying - when it claimed that it never
had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky.

Whoops! Wrong lie! The Justice Department is charging that for many years,
the tobacco industry, on purpose, did not tell people that cigarettes were
bad for them. To cite just one blatant example, on numerous documented
occasions during the 1950s and 1960s, R.J.Reynolds deliberately failed to
run an advertising campaign using the slogan: "Winston Tastes Good, AND
Gives You Lung Cancer!"

As a result of this type of clever deception, the Justice Department
contends, smokers did not realize that cigarettes were hazardous. This is
undoubtedly true of a certain type of smoker; namely, the type of smoker
whose brain has been removed with a melon scoop. Everybody else has known
for decades that cigarettes are unhealthy. I have known many smokers, and I
have never heard one say: "You know why I stick these unnatural wads of
chemically processed tobacco into my mouth, set them on fire and suck hot
gases deep into my lungs? Because I sincerely believe it poses no health
risk!"

When I first experimented with cigarettes, as a young teen-ager in the
early '60s, I knew they were unhealthy, because my dad, a heavy smoker,
warned me of the dangers. "Son," he told me many times, "Hack hack
haarrwwwGGGhhhhkk (spit)." But I tried cigarettes anyway, because, like all
teen-agers, I expected to live a minimum of 50,000 years, and I figured it
was no big deal if I knocked a few centuries of the end. I thought that
smoking would make me look older and more attractive to women - that I'd
fire up an unfiltered Camel and, boom, I'd sprout muscles and vast
quantities of body hair. Unfortunately, this did not happen, although I did
develop a cigarette habit that enabled me to spend the next 15 years
smelling like a low-grade dump fire.

Eventually, I realized I had to kick my habit. This was before the
development of nicotine patches, so I had to devise some other way get my
nicotine "fix" while I was quitting. The method I came up with was:
cheating. So I continued to smoke cigarettes for several years after I
quit. Then I finally got desperate and really did quit, using the "cold
turkey" method, which gets its name from the fact that it is no more
difficult than inserting a frozen 20-pound Butterball completely into your
left nostril.

My point is that, when I smoked, I knew it was unhealthy, and so did every
smoker I ever knew. Nevertheless, the Justice Department believes that we
smokers were victimized by the tobacco industry, and so, on behalf of the
federal government, it has filed a huge lawsuit against the federal
government for spending gazillions of taxpayer dollars to support the
tobacco industry.

Whoops! Wrong again! In fact, the Justice Department is suing the tobacco
industry for many billions of dollars. Needless to say, the tobacco
industry would obtain this money by selling more cigarettes. In fact, the
sale of cigarettes is the financial heart and soul of the War on Smoking.
Cigarette companies are already selling cigarettes like crazy to pay for
the $206 billion anti-tobacco settlement won by the states, which are
distributing the money as follows: 1) Legal fees; 2) Money for attorneys;
3) A whole bunch of new programs that have absolutely nothing to do with
helping smokers stop smoking; and 4) Payments to law firms.

The only danger I see looming ahead is that the tobacco industry will get
tired of serving as the bag person for the anti-smoking effort and actually
quit selling cigarettes. In that case, the only way to keep the
anti-tobacco money flowing in would be for the various governments to join
forces with the legal community and sell cigarettes directly to the public
out of post offices.

This would be similar to the way we've tackled the gambling problem in this
country, which is to have the states run massive lottery operations.

It makes perfect sense to me! Of course, I have a turkey up my nose.