RIVER TOWN SPLIT ON FORMER MAYOR'S STAND ON CIGARETTE TAXES

CORNWALL, Ontario -- There is no mistaking Ron Martelle. He is a big man
with ties as loud as his voice and a white truck with the license plate
``WY EARP.''

Martelle, 55, might be familiar to some television viewers in the United
States because he recorded a commercial for the U.S. tobacco industry's
campaign against higher cigarette taxes.

In the spot, he described himself as a former Mountie who happened to be
mayor of this straight-shooting town on the banks of the St. Lawrence River
when Canada sharply raised tobacco taxes, turning Cornwall into what he
called Dodge City.

``Smugglers were everywhere,'' he said in the ad, his baritone deep as a
well. ``And I'm not talking about small-time dealers selling packs out of
their trunks. The criminals that showed up in Cornwall threatened my life
and the lives of my family.''

Martelle urged the U.S. Congress not to go ahead with a plan to raise taxes
sharply to curb cigarette smoking among teenagers.

``I'd hate to see the same thing happen to your town,'' he said. ``If it
can happen here, it can happen anywhere.''

The Canadian experience was among the strongest weapons used by the forces
that defeated the sweeping tobacco bill in Congress in June. Raise the
cigarette tax by $1.10 per pack, as the now-dead bill would have, and a
black market will follow, opponents warned.

Many of the 47,000 people who live in Cornwall say Martelle is
exaggerating, just as, in their view, he had tended to blow things out of
proportion during the more than five years he was mayor.

``Ron gave the impression that Cornwall was a city under siege, but it
wasn't,'' said Brian Lynch, himself a former mayor of Cornwall.

He remembered that the Cornwall City Council once voted to censure Martelle
because some members were ``appalled by the false image he gave of the
community.''

Shortly after taxes on Canadian cigarettes were raised sharply in 1992,
large quantities of cigarettes left the country, but most were almost
immediately smuggled back into Canada.

Anti-smoking forces accuse the Canadian tobacco companies, which include
subsidiaries of U.S. tobacco firms, of deliberately conspiring with
smugglers to flood the market with cheaper cigarettes on which all the
taxes have not been collected.

The tobacco companies deny any complicity.

``There isn't a shred of evidence to support that,'' said Robert Parker,
president of the Canadian Tobacco Manufacturers' Council. ``The accusation
has been made as part of a push to raise taxes in the U.S.''

On a sunny summer day, when the big, easy, waterfront park in Cornwall is
ruled by gangs of joggers and bicycling French-speaking women from Quebec,
it is difficult to picture this as Martelle's Dodge City.

But there is no question that before Canada lowered taxes to previous
levels in 1994, cigarette smuggling had changed the character of this
Ontario town near the borders of the province of Quebec and the United
States.

``If you came into Cornwall then, you could go into any bar, take any taxi,
go up to any gas station attendant and ask where to buy smuggled
cigarettes,'' said Cpl. Michel Joulet, who headed the anti-smuggling unit
in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Cornwall detachment from 1990 to
1992.

The smuggling worked this way: Cigarettes were made in Canada and exported
- -- without local taxes -- into the United States. These cigarettes have
different names (du Maurier, Player's), different packaging (long, flat
boxes) and even a different taste that most American smokers have never
accepted.

It was always clear that most of the Canadian exports would not be sold in
the United States. Many were brought to warehouses on the Akwesasne Mohawk
Indian Reserve near Cornwall and sent back across the St. Lawrence into
Canada at prices about half as high as fully taxed cigarettes.

Smuggling increased the level of violence in the otherwise quiet city. Many
people, including Joulet, agree that it was not uncommon to hear gunshots
along the river at night. For a time, private boats simply did not venture
out on the river. High-speed chases across the international bridge at the
west end of town were common, and someone once fired a shot into Cornwall's
community center.

How bad was it? ``Bad,'' said Cerdan Lager, owner of Cornwall's Downtown
Diner, an old-fashioned restaurant and ice cream parlor with booths and
red-checkered tablecloths where Martelle's commercial was filmed.
``Shooting at houses, everything. So when Ron talks, he talks.''

But when Martelle talks, his opponents are ready with counterattacks. They
point out that although he calls himself a former Mountie, he was in the
force for only eight months. When he says he and his family had to have
police protection, they say he was taken to a local motel based only on
vague threats.

They explain that in the original version of the commercial, Martelle says
that even with the taxes and all the violence, ``teen smoking didn't ever
go down,'' a statement challenged by opponents of smoking. In a revised
version, he said, ``And as a result, teens purchased black-market
cigarettes.''

They also delight in pointing out that the company Martelle now works for,
Forensic Investigative Associates of Toronto, represents the National
Coalition Against Crime and Tobacco Contraband, a lobby group for tobacco
wholesalers, retailers and the major cigarette producers in the United
States.

Martelle said he had filmed the commercial as former mayor of Cornwall, not
as an employee of Forensic Investigative Associates, and he defends his
message.

``I deal in facts, and facts only,'' he said, seated in the smoking section
of a restaurant at the hotel where he and his wife were kept under police
guard for several days in 1993. He smokes long boxes of Sweet Caporal
cigarettes, but he did not smoke during the interview.

``Dodge City was an accurate portrayal of what was happening at the time,''
he said. ``I'm trying to forewarn U.S. officials and every city in the U.S.
that if taxes go up, I'd bet they're going to suffer what we did here in
Cornwall. In fact, I guarantee it's going to happen.''