Anti-Smoking Hysteria
By Robert J. Samuelson

One of our freedoms is the ability to do or say things that are unpopular, as
long as they don't harm others. The smoking controversy is about this freedom as
well as health, but that has been lost in the hysteria to ostracize smokers and
punish tobacco companies. The hysteria embodied in suits against tobacco
companies and strident antiindustry rhetoric by politicians is so intense
that the biggest companies are now in talks to settle. By press reports, Philip
Morris and RJR might have the industry pay $225 billion to $300 billion over 25
years and submit to more regulation. In return, it would be spared further
liability.

Massive reparations will strike many people as a fit retribution for merchants
of death. The reaction is completely wrong. The cost of a settlement would
largely be passed along to smokers. The industry would create a compensation
fund for "victims" and then raise prices to pay for it. That would represent a
disguised increase in cigarette taxes, which now average 57 cents a pack (24
cents in federal tax, with various state rates). Suppose the price of a pack
rose by 50 cents, a 27 percent jump from the current $1.85. The proper questions
are who would pay the extra tax and who would receive the benefits.

Well, we know who would pay: the 25 percent of Americans who smoke. They consist
heavily of the poor and lowermiddle class. About 70 percent have no more than a
high school diploma. We don't know exactly who would benefit, but the
candidates are clear: (a) smokers or more likely their heirs if they can
show they should be "compensated" for "damages"; (b) the lawyers who would
represent "victims" in compensation claims or receive a guaranteed payout from
the fund; and (c) states that would be paid to offset their allegedly excessive
health costs from smoking.

In short, a compensation fund would be an intricate shell game, with the tobacco
companies mainly as middlemen. All smokers would be taxed to pay "damages" to
some smokers or their families. In the process, we'd create a welfare program
for lawyers. Finally, states would receive a hefty slice. Of course, states that
now feel overburdened by smoking's costs could raise their cigarette taxes. But
a tax increase would, presumably, be unpopular. So 23 state attorneys general
have filed suits against the industry, trying to use the courts to enact hidden
nationwide tax increases. For this the attorneys general project themselves as
heroes.

Now, I am not defending the tobacco industry's public dishonesty. Nor am I
mimicking its posture that cigarettes are no riskier than toothpaste. Smoking is
unhealthy. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that it causes about 400,000
Americans to die prematurely, with an average loss of life of about seven years.
I don't smoke and, as a parent, will fight my children if they start. But
otherwise, I don't think I have the right to impose my views. People have a
right to choose. Punishing them for their choice denies their freedom. Rewarding
them for the ill effects of their choice denies their responsibility.

Neither can be justified unless smokers lack choice or impose costs on others.
Naturally, the antismoking ideology presumes (wrongly) that both conditions are
true. Smokers are supposedly seduced by the industry's advertising, and once
they start puffing, they can't stop, because cigarettes are addictive. Come on.
Since the government's first antismoking report in 1964, almost everyone has
known that cigarettes are dangerous. That knowledge is the main reason the
proportion of smokers has dropped from 42 percent in 1965 to the present 25
percent. And everyone has always known that "kicking the habit" is hard, whether
smoking is addictive or not. Still, millions have done it.

Indeed, the main reason there are fewer smokers today is not that fewer
Americans start smoking but that more give it up. Consider. In 1994, about 77
percent of Americans over 26 had once smoked. But twothirds had stopped. In
1974, only 65 percent of this group had ever smoked, but nearly twothirds still
smoked. The trends among the under26 population are similar.

Nor do smokers and the tobacco industry impose huge economic costs on the
rest of society. Just the opposite: Smokers more than pay their own way. They
already pay steep cigarette taxes and, by dying early, create future savings in
health costs, nursing home care, Social Security and pensions. Even without the
taxes, the savings smokers create by early death may exceed the costs they
impose by 40 percent, estimates Harvard economist W. Kip Viscusi. Just because
this argument is freakish and awkward is no reason to ignore it. If smokers'
shorter life expectancy magically vanished tomorrow, government costs would
rise.

Finally, smokers don't pose a major workplace health hazard through "passive"
smoke: what's inhaled by nonsmokers. Secondary smoke may be highly irritating,
but it's not a major cause of either lung cancer or heart disease. The
scientific studies here are weak. Some find that passive smoke causes a small
amount of cancer; other studies find no effect. These studies examined
nonsmoking wives of smoking husbands. On this meager evidence, a wider danger
can be inferred only by assuming (dubiously) that workers face an exposure
similar to that of wives of smokers.

It is smokers themselves who experience the pleasures and horrors of smoking.
And that's how it should be. As a society, we ought to clarify that principle,
and in this sense, a truce between the industry and its critics enacted into
law by Congress is desirable. Such a truce would have the industry
voluntarily surrender most (or all) of its right to advertise. It might also
finance a modest education program for teenagers on the dangers of smoking. In
return, it would receive immunity from legal liability. The compact would
dispose of the argument that industry ads prey on the illinformed young, while
also denying smokers any reward for their poor health choices.

Given today's hysteria, I doubt anything so evenhanded is possible. The
antismoking zealots essentially want to shut the industry. Trial lawyers see
the tobacco companies as a huge pot of gold. Politicians see them as fabulous
punching bags. The press portrays the story as a struggle of good and evil,
barely questioning antismoking rhetoric. Hardly anyone in this informal
coalition of intolerance even senses that freedom is an issue.

Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company