ANTISMOKING CRUSADE IS JUST A WITCH HUNT

ON Jan. 1, California America's bellwether for social experiments
becomes the first state in the union to ban smoking in bars. Together with
earlier prohibitions against smoking in other public places, the new law
makes it effectively impossible for the 25 percent of Californians who
smoke to do so anywhere in the state save inside their own homes or in the
great outdoors.

Ordinarily, California is a pretty laidback place. All sorts of behavior
that might stir controversy elsewhere is genially allowed, or even
welcomed. Last year the voters legalized the sale and possession of
marijuana ``for medicinal purposes'' under a standard so broad that any
pothead who can persuade a friend to recommend it to cure a headache can
buy a joint and light up. And not long ago it took a lastditch stand by
the business interests of San Francisco to keep its board of supervisors
from putting up signs at the entrances to the city welcoming gays and
lesbians.

But on the subject of tobacco, Californians have hearts of stone. Just
before Jan. 1, placards hailing the bar ban went up all over the place
proclaiming grimly, ``It's about health. It's about time.''

The snowballing national hysteria over smoking has at last enabled me to
understand what I had previously never been able to fathom: the
psychopathology of the famous trials in colonial Salem, Mass., which
resulted in 19 people (mostly women) being hanged as witches. The citizens
of Salem knew that Satan was formidably powerful, and that individuals
sometimes voluntarily threw in their lot with him. What could be more
exciting than to identify these people? What could be more exhilarating
than to extinguish them? Yet the highminded rectitude of the whole effort
was unassailable.

Similarly with the battle against smoking. It began as a quite reasonable
warning to smokers that they were running a risk to their own health. But
soon it escalated: Smokers were accused, on the thinnest of evidence, of
killing nonsmokers through ``passive smoking.''

Cigarette manufacturers were demonized as murderers. The tobacco industry
was forced to agree to pay more than $300 billion to state governments (and
their lawyers) in return for exemption from individual liability lawsuits.

Small wonder that Britain's respected Economist magazine has begun to feel
uneasy about this avalanche of highminded hatred. In a long and thoughtful
essay (by a nonsmoker) in its Dec. 20 issue, it warns that ``the attack on
tobacco has crossed the admittedly fuzzy line that distinguishes moral
enthusiasm from illiberal vindictiveness, and at such a time good fun
should yield to good thinking.''

Patiently the Economist reviews the arguments: the risk to the smoker
(wellknown, and a matter of choice, like drinking or motorcycling); to
others, through ``passive smoking'' (``evidence of medical harm from the
stray wisp of smoke in a workplace or restaurant remains vanishingly thin''
and easily solved by segregating the smokers); to society, which must
pay for their medical care (but they actually save society money, by dying
earlier); the addictiveness of nicotine (perhaps, but ``There are today as
many people who have quit smoking as there are people who smoke''); and
finally, protection of the young (justifiable up to a point, but ``since
1992 teenage smoking has risen in America even as the overall rate has
fallen, a fact that antismoking hysteria may partly explain'').

Soberly the Economist concludes, ``Because they are nursing their dudgeon
and savoring their victories rather than thinking with care, antismokers
believe themselves to be upholding liberal social principles when, in fact,
they are traducing them.''

But such thoughtful protests wouldn't have stopped the virtuous citizens of
Salem from extirpating the evil right under their noses, and it won't stop
the antismokers either. Doing good is just too much fun.