Reprinted from The Washington Times , 5am -- April 21, 1998
The sanction to kill the poor among us
By Wesley Pruden
The tobacco deal appears to be as dead as a two-packs-a-day smoker, and good riddance. The deal stinks like an after-dinner cigar.
Newt Gingrich, who will have a lot to say about whether the legislation gets through Congress, understands this, at least for now.
"Let's talk about tobacco," he told interviewer Tim Russert on CNBC. "I am opposed to a liberal tobacco bill which would raise taxes to create bigger government. I think it's a bad bill. I think we ought to give back to the taxpayers every penny of new revenue from tobacco. I think that bill is a very liberal, big government, big bureaucracy bill and those people who say that it's not a Republican bill, they're right.
"I think it's going to be very hard to get through the Congress a bill which gives big government more money for more bureaucrats."
All true, but that's only half of it. It's an immoral bill as well, if we can invoke such a quaint word as "morality" in present-day America, where the '60s mantra -- "if it feels good, do it" -- has become the standard of official behavior. To a lot of people in Washington, extorting money from their constituents feels good.
The politicians in Washington see only the revenue, oceans of dollars to finance an expansion of the government to a size and scope the big-government liberals never dared dream of.
Practicing the sleight of hand that is the requisite talent of the successful politician, they'll pay out niggardly sums for a few television commercials and long-winded lectures aimed at persuading kids to lay off cigarettes. But they don't want anti-smoking programs to be taken too seriously, because the government will have a vested interest -- never has "vested interest" been more precisely used -- in keeping a large number of Americans hooked on nicotine.
The beauty part, as Washington reckons it, is that the least desirable and most expendable people in the population -- poor blacks and poor whites who are the most addicted -- will pay for this tawdry scheme with their health and many with their lives. They'll pay the taxes that pay for a lot of government goodies for the middle class, where the votes are.
The liberals, with their instinct for bleeding all over their shoes for mankind while blowing off the interests of flesh and blood people, see the anti-tobacco hysteria as something to ride to destinations that should frighten the rest of us.
CBS News reports that the White House is developing an "aggressive anti-cigarette enforcement program" to regulate the distribution of tobacco products. All manufacturers, importers, exporters and wholesalers of tobacco would become licensed agents of the government, and thousands and thousands of mom-and-pop grocers would be required to register with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. These are the same trigger-happy ATF agents who are trained to shoot first and ask questions if anyone survives. It's a scheme that could be dreamed up only at the Children's Hour. (Nobody has thought about the risks of a shootout in the Oval Office, between the ATF and the Secret Service, if the president lights up one of his frequent cigars.)
Some of those fanning the hysteria don't, or won't, understand the issue as anything more than a matter of process and revenue. Sen. John McCain, who will go 0 for 2 if his tobacco bill follows campaign finance into oblivion, seems puzzled and maybe betrayed by Newt's new position on the tobacco bill.
"The speaker said that he wasn't going to let Clinton get to the left of him on this issue," he says, "so I'm curious as to why now there's been this change. We're being attacked by Ted Kennedy and Congressman Henry Waxman and others for not being tough enough on the tobacco companies. ... And on the other side it's being attacked for being a big government solution. ... We've got to do something about the fact that 3,000 kids start smoking every day."
His Republican colleague, John Ashcroft, agrees but thinks there's a better way than establishing a federal tobacco constabulary: "There is something that really hasn't been talked about in the debate: individual responsibility. I think that ought to be understood."
Tobacco is unpopular because it stinks and it hurts people who use it. One smoker can ruin dinner for an entire restaurant full of hungry people. Tobacco also kills, but so do other practices, some nastier than smoking. When Joycelyn Elders came to The Times for lunch several years ago and spent two hours lecturing on the mortal risks of tobacco, we asked whether she would similarly denounce the love rites of homosexuals, which are deadlier than cigarettes and have decimated the lavender legion.
She merely frowned. "Well, I, I, uh, uh, I didn't come here to talk about that."Wesley Pruden is editor in chief of The Times.
Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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