THOUGH IT COUGHS UP BUCKS, BIG TOBACCO GETS LAST YUKS

AFTER more than two years dancing with Big Tobacco, state Attorney General
Christine Gregoire may be headed out the door with a fistful of money for
Washington. We'll take the money, sure, but no matter how tough the
settlement is, tobacco companies will get the last laugh.

They're laughing right now, in fact, holding their tummies and mussing
their shellacked hair. Even before Congress killed the federal settlement
in June, Big Tobacco began an amazing metamorphosis from villain to victim,
from corporate behemoth to poor little business. They're no longer
conspirators; they're a bunch of guys who, hey, just want to sell some
stuff and have a good time if the politicians would quit hassling them.

It has worked.

The fight against Big Tobacco had momentum last year. We wanted tobacco
CEOs to pay for our pain and suffering. Big Tobacco felt our fury and
offered up Joe Camel as a near-human sacrifice. Vengeance was nearly ours
for the loved ones who had started smoking as teens, tried to quit and died
too young from tobacco-related diseases.

But the settlement wasn't tough enough for public-health advocates, who
refused to be satisfied until tobacco took its rightful place alongside
crack in the war on drugs. They loaded up the settlement with taxes and
restrictions until Big Tobacco balked. About $40 million in tobacco ads
later (not to mention campaign contributions or lobbyists' fees), the
settlement mysteriously rotted and died. Gregoire and the other attorneys
general had to start over.

The past year has been good to Big Tobacco.

Clinton's sex scandal buried the public so deep in lies and sweet-faced
betrayal that a few whoppers from tobacco CEOs didn't seem so bad any more.
Between Clinton and campaign-finance hearings, the public has grown weary
of secret documents and Shocking Revelations.

The courts were good to Big Tobacco, too. A federal judge ruled this summer
that the Environmental Protection Agency didn't properly evaluate the
dangers of secondhand smoke. Another judge in Illinois struck down a
billboard restriction as an infringement on free speech. A third judge
ruled that Congress never granted the Food and Drug Administration the
authority to regulate nicotine as a drug.

Amidst it all grew the suspicion that lawsuits were getting out of hand,
even for America. Dow Corning Corporation settled a class-action lawsuit
over breast implants for $3.2 billion, despite no conclusive evidence of
implants' harm. Chrysler paid $263 million for the death of an unbuckled
child in a Dodge Caravan. A Seattle man sued Safeway and the Dairy Farmers
of Washington, saying milk clogged his arteries. And New Orleans filed a
lawsuit against the gun industry seeking reparations for the cost of
violence.

The shrine of victimhood was stuffed to capacity, and Big Tobacco saw the
public wavering in their indignation. They swooped in with brilliant
campaigns to remind the public who the truly bad guys are.

Enter Joe Camel's replacement, stage left: the `Mighty Tasty" ad campaign,
a gleeful poke in the eye of every hand-wringer who acted as if the R.J.
Reynolds Tobacco Corp. had broken into homes at night and hung Joe Camel
mobiles over the cribs of babies.

Camel's ads feature four tacky lifestyles: suburban gold digger,
trailer-lovin' Lotto winner, Hollywood star and - surprise - trial lawyer.
A trial lawyer is no hero, the ads remind. He's a sleazy guy surrounded by
bimbos in whiplash collars, a self-absorbed greed hound smoking by the
poolside.

Winston joins the political fray with its "The bull stops here" campaign.
Ads in Sports Illustrated show a voting booth: Winston cigarettes have no
additives and no bull, the ads say (unlike the politicians out to deny the
public a good smoke).

Steven Goldstone, chairman of Reynolds' parent company, is capitalizing on
tobacco's gains. In a recent speech, he railed against the "unprecedented
litigation assault" by state governments and tort lawyers. He mocked the
"sorry spectacle of politicians" who try to tell 47 million American adult
smokers how to live their lives. It is a speech he wouldn't have dared
deliver a year ago. Today, he can persuade with all the earnest patriotism
of a Neil Diamond song, and it sells.

This is the trouble with politics. Important issues enter the political
realm, and then the reasons for importance get buried by politics. It's so
easy to forget tobacco companies' worst sin: conspiring to addict children
to a cancer-causing drug.

The settlement under negotiation right now is tough, but still a pale
shadow of the original deal killed in Congress - about $200 billion for 46
states, including Washington, compared to $365.5 billion in the last
agreement. The Marlboro Man may get to keep riding this time.

Gregoire is sure to earn her victory, but tobacco will keep winning.
American tobacco companies sell two-thirds of their products outside the
United States. They use everything on their billboards, from Mustangs in
Poland to little girls in Cambodia to the Virgin Mary in the Philippines.
It's cool, so cool, to smoke American cigarettes.

Washington may get a lot of money if Gregoire and the other attorneys
general can settle before tobacco companies win any more sympathy. But it
will be hard to stay smug here in Smoke-Free America when tobacco companies
head overseas with a skip and a laugh, imploring the world to "Discover a
Taste of Freedom." Abroad and at home, capitalism laced with nicotine is
irresistible.

Susan Nielsen's column appears regularly on editorial pages of The Times.
Her e-mail address is: sunielsen@seattletimes.com