LEGISLATION MORE ABOUT MONEY THAN CURBING TEEN SMOKING

The tobacco legislation coming out of the Senate Commerce Committee is
enough to make one wonder whether it matters if Republicans will hold onto
the Congress in 1998.

This legislation bears all of the familiar marks of Democratic bills - a
huge cash grab by the federal the federal government (new taxes), the
crea-tion of 17 new and permanent federal boards, and an enormous
agrandizement of federal power. All of this is done in the name of solving a
problem that the federal gov-ernment cannot solve - teen smoking.

We can understand why someone President Clinton seizes upon teen smoking. It
has an easily demonized target (the tobacco companies ),a halo effect ("this
is about children"), and the desirable result of increasing federal power
and encouraging busybodies.

But conservatives should be skeptical of this legislation six ways from
Sunday. To begin with there is the fraudulent claim that this is a bill
about curbing teen smoking. Only 2 percent of cigarette sales are to
teenagers. The overwhelming majority of smokers are adults who make an
informed choice. Yes, most smokers begin the habit as teenagers, but
millions quit. There are just as many former smokers as there are smokers in
the United States today.

Should we severely tax lower-income adults who make the choice to smoke? Why
not tax those who drink too much or consume too many potato chips? They,
too, are endangering their health. There is no logical stopping point in the
campaign to coerce people into healthy habits.

The tobacco bill is also a giant in-ternal contradiction. As Sen. John
Ashcroft, a Missouri Republican, argued on the Senate floor, the premise of
taxing smokers is that they will quit rather than pay up. But the revenue
flow that is pro-jected from the bill - to pay for all those anti-smoking
ads, new fed-eral boards, paybacks to farmers and much more - assumes the
new taxes will have no effect on smokers.

And this bill imposes the most regressive tax in recent memory.
Three-quarters of smokers earn' under $50,000. If this bill passes, they
will pay an additional $1,000 per year per household.

The tobacco companies are to be punished, under the so-called "look back"
provisions of the bill, if smok-ing among teenagers does not de-cline by
fixed amounts. But as even The New York Times acknowledges in a front-page
report this week, no one has an idea whether doubling the price of a pack
of cigarettes will have the slightest impact on youth smoking.

Teen smoking is a bad idea. But it is hardly the most serious problem
affecting teens. Drunken driving, illegal drugs and violence are all more
serious challenges. Besides, who really believes a federal hectoring effort
is going to change the behavior of kids? A survey published in the Journal
of the American Med-ical Association in September 1997 found that the
factors that prevent kids from smoking are strong con-nections to family,
lots of shared activities with parents and a strong attachment to school.

This federal cash grab merely spreads money around to all of the
politicians' favorite projects.

It is the premise of this demagogic legislation - that adults are not
responsible for their actions - and not cigarette smoke that is poisoning so
much of American life today.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"