Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, June 24, 1994                   TAG: 9406290025
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A SMOKING BAN?

They sell an addictive product that, used as intended, kills more than 400,000 Americans every year.

But you know something else about cigarettes? They're legal. Not only that; we believe banning them would prove about as effective as prohibiting alcohol. Which is to say, forget about it.

Not only would a ban not work, it would expand the already out-of-control bureaucratic nannyism that engulfs Washington, enervates the nation and enrages the citizenry.

And so we are curious about Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler's current anti-tobacco strategy and the congressional hearings that are a part of it.

Where are they headed? How fully have the crusaders considered the consequences?

The strategy seems to be as follows:

As if he didn't have enough to do, Kessler wants to regulate cigarettes as a drug-delivery device. But he can't without political support from Congress.

To get it, he's trying not merely to prove that nicotine is addictive - a fact already established by scientists and recognized everywhere except in tobacco executives' testimony. He's also trying to show that cigarette-makers manipulate the levels of nicotine in their products as if it were a drug, which it is.

In testimony this week before the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health, Kessler described one firm's secret project to genetically engineer a tobacco plant with twice the nicotine of regular tobacco. A useful innovation, if the purpose is to keep customers by addicting them.

Useful information, too, if the purpose is to shed light on what tobacco companies are up to. The question is: What are Kessler and the regulatory juggernaut up to?

Keep in mind the FDA is in the business of approving drugs, albeit glacially, as safe and efficacious in particular amounts and for particular purposes. It's pretty hard to imagine an FDA-approved cigarette.

In which case, what would a poor regulator do?

Ban the things? Crown Kessler Czar in Charge of Deciding Whether Smoking is Allowed? Appoint a posse of torch-carrying Big Brothers looking out for our health and punishing transgressors?

Tobacco lobbyists, their pockets laden with Southern lawmakers, aren't the only ones who should be skeptical of that prospect. No one but a federal bureaucrat could believe that criminalizing cigarettes would win a victory that has eluded the endless War on Drugs.

On the contrary, the best weapons against the scourge of smoke are consumer information, social pressure and market incentives.

Let's go ahead and hold hearings, issue Surgeon General's reports, counter with cold facts the sophisticated lure of cigarette advertising.

Let's restrict smoking in public places and work places where non-smokers may be unreasonably exposed. If the huddled souls satisfying their addictions on street corners outside their office buildings are feeling stigmatized, so be it. They should quit.

Let's also jack up the federal excise tax on cigarettes, both to help pay for health-care reform and to discourage especially teen-agers from smoking. Two dollars a pack would do.

But, please, let's escape the clutches of the Kesslers. And let's avoid the road to prohibition. Experience shows it leads nowhere.