REASON GOES UP IN SMOKE
No sense shielding tobacco farmers in war on cigarettes

I don't smoke.

My children don't smoke and I would not want them to smoke. I think tobacco
is dangerous to one's health and, in fact, more dangerous than lots of other
substances that are kept as prescription drugs.

I have no problem with limits on cigarette advertising. Let me also say that
I have never earned a penny from the tobacco industry, and when I was a dean
and raised funds for MIT, I never raised any money from the tobacco
industry. At the same time, the hypocrisy and bad economics of controlling
smoking have gotten completely out of hand. President Clinton is quoted in
the papers as telling the tobacco farmers, ''I think that every American
recognizes that tobacco farmers have not done anything wrong.

You grow a legal crop; you're not doing the marketing of tobacco to
children; and you're doing your part as citizens.'' The president went on to
say he would protect their interests with generous buyouts. Wrong on every
count. If anyone is morally guilty, everyone who participated in this
industry after they knew tobacco was a dangerous substance has done
something wrong.

This includes the farmers who grew it; the retailers who sold it; and the
state and federal governments that collected taxes on it. There is no reason
to pick out any one link in the chain that brings tobacco to our children
and say it is morally guilty while every other link in that chain - and in
its flow of money - is innocent. No farmer was forced to grow tobacco.

Every farmer could have grown other crops instead.

Each grew tobacco because it was their most profitable crop. Each was just
as greedy and heedless of children's health as those who run the tobacco
companies. More to the point, if an industry sells products that are legal,
no one, including the companies and their executives, has done anything
morally wrong.

It is the job of government to determine whether products are too dangerous
to sell and to say which products should not be sold to minors.

If one wants to find a party with the most moral blame, one would point to
the retailers who did not enforce the existing laws limiting cigarette sales
to minors.

They were guilty of a crime, but so were th e state attorneys general who
were busy suing the tobacco companies but too busy to prosecute retailers
for illegally selling tobacco to minors.

Perhaps the president should be bringing charges of dereliction of duty
against those state attorneys general. But the economics is as bad as the
moral hypocrisy.

Clinton talks about taking money away from the companies as if he isn't
taking money away from any real human beings - other than perhaps the chief
executives of the companies. Whatever the government does to the tobacco
companies, let me assure you tobacco CEOs' salaries are not going to go
down. When tobacco companies write checks to the federal government, that
money has to come from one of two sources - either their customers the
smokers, or their shareholders. Perhaps we want to make smokers pay a lot
more taxes.

But it is not obvious to me that we do. They are, on average, a
below-average income group.

Essentially we are radically raising the taxes on one class of low-income
individuals for doing something that is completely legal.

Doing so simply isn't fair. It also does not work. Sweden just reduced its
high tobacco taxes by almost one-third since the taxes just caused a crime
wave of smuggling without doing much to control smoking - much as the
prohibition of alcohol created a crime wave in the United States in the
1920s and '30s without doing much to control the use of alcohol. By now,
those who own shares in the tobacco companies are sophisticated investors
well aware of their risks if tobacco is further restricted and taxed and
equally well aware of the upside potential if the companies can strike a
good deal to limit cancer suits.

It is hard to make a case as to why the public should be sympathetic or
antagonistic to them. They are simply financial gamblers. If Congress gives
tobacco farmers billions to compensate them for not growing tobacco, as
President Clinton says he wants to do, then our congressional members in the
North and West are much dumber than I think they are. Employment has fallen
in a lot of industries in these regions, and I have not noticed southern
lawmakers offering to compensate those that lost their jobs. Some of those
jobs have also been lost because of changes in government rules and
regulations. One might think of the decline in the New England fishing
industry as a result of conservation limits imposed on commercial fishing.

There is no economic case for compensating tobacco farmers. It may be good
politics, but it is bad economics. Millions of Americans lose their jobs
every year. They have just as much right as any tobacco farmer to
compensation. But in the American system, capitalism, we don't pay
compensation to those who have lost their jobs. There should be no special
exceptions for tobacco farmers.

They are not morally better than the rest of us. Their economic plight is
not different than that of millions of other Americans.

Lester C. Thurow is professor of management and economics at the MIT Sloan
School of Management.