CURIOUS ASPECTS OF THE TOBACCO SETTLEMENT

Legislators are maneuvering adroitly in the tobacco Armageddon coming up.

It is sobering to heavy political spenders that notwithstanding that the
tobacco industry spent copiously in the last political campaign, nothing
very much appears to have been accomplished. A tobacco bill of some sort is
coming in, and it can be said of it that it is coming in from left field if
it's true that the political left tends to be intrusive in the matter of
(non-sexual) human behavior. There are impulses from the right, if it's
true that the right tends to be distinctively protective of young people.

Meanwhile, Philip Morris et al. are all over the place, advertising in the
press and on TV their version of a desirable tobacco settlement: 1) lots of
money, 2) a ban on cigarette vending machines, 3) disclosure of all
health-related research and 4) OK on a ban on secondhand smoke in public
places.

What do they get in return? They want a yearly cap on damages of $5
billion. If your lawyer gets a $10 billion judgment, the second half of the
award would not be payable until next year. Since it is at this point
likelier than not that juries are going to be awarding larger and larger
judgments as we blacken the image of the weed-makers, it is not improbable
that after a year or two the companies would be paying out $5 billion in
annual damages forever. What this means is as simple as that they are
willing to add $5 billion per year to the X billion dollars they are
already willing to step forward and pay up.

At this moment, the front lines of the quarrel engage the question of
second-hand-smoke damage and of child protection. Jacob Sullum, a senior
editor of the libertarian monthly Reason, has written a very readable book
called "For Your Own Good." Sullum does not smoke but will die in defense
of the right of others to smoke. His book is a persuasive polemic against
the shower-adjusters of this world whose great hands reach into your
quarters and insist that the temperature you are enjoying is really just a
little too hot, or else a little too cold.

Sullum devastatingly reviews the evidence that we are all victimized by our
neighbors' smoking. Yes, there is some effect from the other person's
smoke, but it is very weak. "The EPA estimated that living with a smoker
increases your risk of lung cancer by 19 percent. In contrast, smoking
increases your risk of lung cancer by 1,000 percent."

The tobacco companies' willingness to give up on the anti-smoking in public
quarters crusade is significant but also shrewd. They are prepared to let
that battle be fought out be the smokers themselves, whose indignation
could easily take effective political shape in the months and years ahead.

On the matter of young people, the question has to do with what can be done
to children by adults and what can't be done to children by adults and what
can't be done to children by adults. In Idaho they are considering a
Draconian law that would imprison anyone selling to a minor from an
establishment that does not have a permit to sell cigarettes. Now the
tobacco settlement, in addition to agreeing to ban cigarette vending
machines, volunteers $500 million per year to a campaign to dissuade young
people from smoking and throws in a ban on outdoor advertising and "on the
use of cartoon characters or human figures in other advertising."

Why they need such advertising is a puzzle, since Hollywood is doing it for
free. Reports The Wall Street Journal: "Smoking in movies is continuing to
flourish. Julia Roberts puffs away in 'My Best Friend's Wedding,' a movie
that young teen-age girls helped turn into a blockbuster.
University of
California at San Francisco researchers analyzed five top-grossing films
each year and found that while only one lead character smoked in 1990, 80
percent of moviedom's male leads lit up in 1991-96." Leonardo DiCaprio and
Kate Winslet hardly had time to drown in "Titanic" so busy were they
puffing away.

But people do not go gladly into the dark night of economic extinction. If
the tobacco companies were really to succeed in abolishing teen-age
smoking, they would wake up one day without enough money to pay their
annual $5 billion in damages. What they very much fear is what such as
Jacob Sullum resent for philosophical reasons: namely, a $1.50 increase per
pack.

I have been brought up on the neat little formula that a 4 percent rise in
cigarette prices means a 1 percent reduction in cigarette use. This
transcribes to a 25 percent reduction in smoking if the proposed bill went
into law. That's a lot fewer cigarettes sold, an objective in which every
one can find pleasure and pain.