BAN TOBACCO LIKE MARIJUANA AND COCAINE

THE local drug pusher cornered the president of the United States at a
fund-raiser and said:

"Cocaine has been good. We paid for our mansion off cocaine. We educated
our kids off cocaine. We paved our old driveway with blacktop off cocaine.
We pay our property taxes. We pay the preacher on Sunday morning. We
overhaul our vehicles, and we buy tires. We pay our insurance. And we pay
our mules and runners, and give them Social Security and Medicare. And we
just try to live right and do right off cocaine."

Replace the word "cocaine" with "tobacco" and you pretty much have the
emotional speech that tobacco farmer Mattie Mack gave to President Clinton
in Brandenburg, Ky., Thursday.

"Aw, come on," you say, "tobacco is legal and cocaine is not, and you can't
compare the two."

That's my point. I can compare them in terms of the damage they do to their
addicted users, but I can't compare their legal status. Yet I know that
there will be no solution to the curse of tobacco in this society until it
is banned just like marijuana and cocaine are, and there probably won't be
a solution even then.

I never believed last summer that the tobacco companies would pay $368.5
billion and accept the terms of the state attorneys general, of the
president and Congress, and of the health-care industry just to stay in
business with curtailed prosperity. Tobacco is such a golden goose that I
knew the industry would find some excuse ... like Sen. John McCain,
R-Ariz., raising the payment to $516 billion over 25 years ... to say that
it would rather fight than switch.

Clinton said in Kentucky Thursday, "I do not want to put the tobacco
companies out of business. I do want to put them out of the business of
selling cigarettes to teen-agers."

The tobacco tycoons have always known that if they can't sell cigarettes to
teen-agers, they are putting themselves out of business. A 14-year-old who
reaches 24 without smoking is very unlikely to take up the filthy, killing
habit.

That is why tobacco industry leaders have lied to America for generations
about the deliberate boosting of nicotine levels, the ad campaigns targeted
at teen-agers, the special lures for minority members. The tobacco industry
knows where survival and prosperity lie. And that is why the tobacco bosses
have brazenly declared war on legislation that would increase the cost of
cigarettes sharply by raising taxes on tobacco products; would give the
Food and Drug Administration power to regulate the levels of addictive
nicotine in tobacco products; and restrict drastically the advertising and
marketing practices of tobacco companies.

Big Tobacco has taken a colossal gamble that farmers like Mack, the
millions of people who already are hooked on nicotine and the Republican
Party will rise up and help them to maintain something close to the status
quo. The tobacco moguls seem to think that handing out a few billion
dollars in campaign contributions and sugar-coated bribes will provide more
protection than any $516 billion settlement.

But recent exposes of perfidy by the tobacco industry, and revelations of
the health tragedies caused by tobacco, have made it politically impossible
for Republicans to provide the shelter that the tobacco industry expects.

So there will be legislation. But it probably won't be the "new
Prohibition." It will be tough enough to make a lot of farmers think of
growing collard greens, and force a lot of tobacco company employees to
look for work elsewhere. But it won't put tobacco in the same pipe with
cocaine. So a semi-black market for tobacco will arise, the health problems
will endure, and our politicians will wring their hands and give more
speeches.

And all the hopes of protecting teen-agers, and of using tobacco settlement
money for noble causes, will go up in schoolyard smoke.

Rowan is a syndicated columnist based in Washington, D.C.