GOVERNMENT GETS ITS CUT IN ALCOHOL, TOBACCO SALES by DICK FEAGLER,
Scripps Howard News Service Copyright (c) 1997, The Kansas City Star Co.

It's big news that one of the major tobacco companies
has admitted that cigarettes are addictive, may be lethal
and are marketed for minds as young as 14 years old.

Who didn't know this?

My late grandmother, born in the last century,
referred to cigarettes as "coffin nails. " But nobody
ever quoted her on the front page.

"Are you still on those coffin nails? " she would
ask me when, with great savoir faire, I lit a Salem with
a sharp flick of the wornout spring of my Ronson.

Of course, back then, everybody I knew was on those
coffin nails.

"Got a light? " was still an acceptable pickup line
in an upscale saloon. Cigarettes might eventually kill
you, but you'd die looking cool.

The drive to look cool is one of the great human
drives, like the drive for sex or the drive for air or
the drive to control the TV remote control.

The large type tells us that a cigarette maker called
the Liggett Group Inc. has newsily acknowledged that
cigarettes are an addiction.

This came as news to an audience of one: Bob Dole.
During what is politely called his "campaign," Dole's
most memorable utterance was that he didn't know whether
cigarettes were addictive.

This caused a confidence gap between Dole and the
legion of smokers and exsmokers. It is difficult to
support a presidential candidate who is nagged with
doubts about selfevident matters like the existence of
gravity, the shape of the earth or cigarette addiction.

"If he hasn't figured that out, what else hasn't he
figured out? " was the obvious question. November
answered it.

The Liggett Group, manufacturers of Chesterfields,
broke down and confessed that it targets its advertising
to the 14yearold mind. It promised to stop doing this
is the future.

No great revelation there. Just about any
advertisement you see for anything is aimed at a consumer
with the intellect of a 14yearold and the mating
instinct of a goat. Drink this beer and you'll get
women. Wear these panty hose and you'll get men. Drive
this allterrain vehicle on a deathdefying safari
through the Great Northern parking lot and you'll look
cool. If the Liggett Group starts aiming at the mature
American mind, its audience will be small enough to allow
it to advertise by telegram.

Liggett has agreed to put a warning label on its
brands stating that smoking is addictive. To smokers,
this is a revelation about as riveting as telling
residents of the Ohio Valley that floods are wet.

The government is heralding this as a triumph, but it
is a triumph that doesn't mask the government's
underlying ethical dilemma.

The underlying ethical dilemma is that the government
is a silent partner with the nicotine and alcohol drug
kingpins. While loudly waging war on other drugs,
the government takes its cut of the proceeds of the two
most lethal drugs in America. A hint of the economic
philosophy of Colombian drug lords is alive in Columbus
and the District of Columbia.

An honest warning label on the side of a pack of
cigarettes would have to say: "Reminder: Government
proceeds from the sale of this deadly and addictive
product are used to build major league sports stadiums."
Or: "FYI: Cultivation and manufacture of this
deathcausing, tragically habitforming substance are
subsidized by your tax dollars. Have a nice day."

If what comes out of a cigarette came out of a
smokestack, the government would shut the factory down.
Physicians who prescribe marijuana to dying patients
have been threatened with criminal prosecution.

Some years ago, the government waged a costly allout
war on asbestos. The feds, I discovered recently, have
moved in to occupy my kitchen floor.

"There's some asbestos under there," said the man who
had come to lay some new tile. "The law says we either
got to get some men in space suits to come in and rip it
out or we got to bury it. " We buried it.

But in the war against nicotine and alcohol, the
government has dubious moral standing. It is hard to
justify being part of the solution and a beneficiary of
the problem at the same time. When the government fights
the tobacco companies, it wears a boxing glove on one
hand and holds the other hand out for a piece of the
action. That ain't cool.