THICKENING SMOKE

The latest strategy to derail tobacco legislation in Congress involves
loading it up with unrelated provisions aimed at illegal drug use. This
attempt to change the subject (and to embarrass President Clinton as soft
on drugs in the process) is a cynical manipulation by Big Tobacco and its
allies in Congress. With a majority of Americans wanting a meaningful
tobacco control law this year, members need to resist extraneous junk and
stay focused on the mission, which is saving a new generation of children
from getting hooked on smoking. On Wednesday a group of Senate Republican
leaders, citing figures showing that high school marijuana use is
increasing faster than smoking, unveiled their proposal to use tobacco
industry revenues to enforce narcotics laws. They said they would move to
attach it to every tobacco bill that comes up. In the House, meanwhile,
Speaker Newt Gingrich is leaning toward submerging his own long-promised
teen smoking proposal into a broader bill fighting drug abuse.

He appointed Representative Deborah Pryce of Ohio to head a GOP task force
on tobacco; she promptly depicted teen smoking as less of an epidemic than
drugs. While efforts to curb illegal drug use are valuable on their own,
these latest proposals will do nothing to stop youth access to smoking.

The only practical way to do that is to increase the price of cigarettes so
they are unattractive to teenagers.

That means increasing the cigarette tax or imposing fines that the tobacco
industry will pass on to consumers in the form of higher prices. To that
end, Representative Martin Meehan of Lowell submitted legislation, also on
Wednesday, to increase the tax on cigarettes by $1.50 a pack, with about 35
percent of the money going to the states for antismoking programs aimed at
young people.

Most of the revenue would help pay down the federal debt. The bill would
also call on each tobacco manufacturer to reduce youth smoking by 80
percent over 10 years, with a schedule of fines if the targets are not met.
And unlike the settlement reached with the tobacco industry last June, the
bill provides no liability protections from lawsuits. Meehan's bipartisan
proposal, cosponsored by Representatives James Hansen of Utah, a
Republican, and Henry Waxman of California, a Democrat, has the added
advantage of answering critics like Gingric, who complain that tobacco
bills have become excuses to fund social programs and expand government.
''This enables us to separate out all the partisan rhetoric and narrowly
define the issue,'' Meehan said yesterday. ''It lets us do the things we
need to do without getting into a partisan battle with Republicans over
spending priorities.'' Meehan's bill doesn't do everything. It is silent on
protecting tobacco farmers and cannot achieve the kinds of severe marketing
restrictions outlined in the voluntary settlement. But with tobacco's
friends in Congress looking to delay and deceive, it is a direct approach
to passing legislation before cigarettes can addict another generation.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski