ANTI-TOBACCO CROWD HASN'T LEARNED ANYTHING FROM HISTORY

Perhaps nothing is more amusing or more pathetic than adults determined to
force adolescents to do their bidding. The defeat of the tobacco bill in
Congress and pledges by the Clinton administration to continue to search
for ways to "save our children" from the ravages of tobacco smoke and
addiction to nicotine will be about as effective as Prohibition.

Today, the crusaders are named Bill Clinton, C. Everett Koop and John
McCain. More than 90 years ago, there were Chicago's Lucy Page Gaston and
her Anti-Cigarette League of America. It was Gaston who invented the term
"coffin nails."

In the beginning, she seemed to be making progress. Cigarette production
peaked at 4.9 billion units in 1897, but by 1901 fewer than 3.5 billion
were produced. Gaston's crusade helped produce laws against smoking,
including some that targeted women only (New York City passed the Sullivan
Ordinance in 1908, prohibiting women from smoking in public; other
municipalities followed New York's example). For many, such laws only added
to the allure of cigarettes. This forbidden-fruit factor, coupled with the
aura of danger surrounding cigarettes, and men who smoked while away in
World War I, contributed to more, not less, smoking. States like Arkansas,
Idaho, Iowa and Tennessee repealed their anti-smoking laws in 1917. The
defeat of the anti-smoking crusade was a forerunner to the repeal of
Prohibition, another attempt to regulate a form of human behavior that
encountered strong resistance.

As historian Robert Sobel recounts in his book "They Satisfy: The Cigarette
in American Life," Gaston toyed with the idea of running for president. Her
platform sounded like a forerunner of the Christian Coalition: "clean
morals, clean food and fearless law enforcement."

Gaston was appalled when Warren Harding - a cigarette smoker - was elected
president in 1920. She said Harding had a "cigarette face" (a diagnosis
invented by Gaston). She predicted Harding would come to no good, that his
administration would be laced with corruption and that Harding would even
die in office before the end of his term (he did, but not from cigarette
smoking). Gaston was struck by a trolley in 1924 and later died. Her doctor
said the cause of death was not her injuries, but throat cancer, though
there is no indication she was a smoker.

Sobel notes that when Gaston started the National Anti-Cigarette League,
4.4 billion cigarettes were consumed. The year she died, more than 73
billion cigarettes were sold.

In 1905, the New York Times had editorialized against one proposed
anti-cigarette law in Indiana, calling it "fussy legislation" and "as
scandalous an interference as can be conceived with constitutional
freedoms." Today, the Times, which flipped on abortion, has also flipped on
cigarettes, believing teenagers can be dissuaded from smoking without
regulation of the "cool" factor.

It is unlikely that today's anti-tobacco crusaders and politicians will be
any more successful than Lucy Page Gaston and her followers. Adults telling
kids they don't want them to smoke will likely encourage them to puff even
more. What was that about those who learn nothing from history are doomed
to repeat it?

(c) 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)