DATE: Thursday, June 26, 1997               TAG: 9706260009

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B13  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: OPINION 

SOURCE: Patrick Lackey

                                            LENGTH:   83 lines

CIGARETTE BRANDS SHOULD HAVE NUMBERS, NOT NAMES

I remember my first cigarette as though it was 42 years ago.

The cigarette was unfiltered. I didn't so much smoke it as eat it. Can't say that I've ever been sicker. All of me regretted being born. Especially my stomach.

Never have I stopped being grateful for becoming so violently ill that hot Kansas day while my parents were away. Why couldn't more people be so lucky?

As we all know, however, life's unfair. I knew a great man who started becoming an alcoholic at age 19, when he sipped his first bourbon. He said his entire body asked the bourbon, ``Where have you been all my life?''

The same man's body enjoyed its first cigarette. He's one of the people I've known whom cancer killed in its slow, gruesome way. He'd be with us today, the wittiest man in whatever room he entered, if his first cigarette or two had made him wish to die.

There's talk, now, of making a safer cigarette, one with nicotine so the smoker feels the hit, but one without many of the toxic chemicals.

Big mistake. Better to develop cigarettes that cause smokers to puke their guts out, as I did. The smoking sections in restaurants would have handy paper bags, like the ones airlines provide. Smokers might inquire, ``Do you mind if I puke?''

But we'll never see such a useful product. And why not? Don't let this shock you, but I have it on good authority that cigarettes are manufactured FOR THE MONEY!

The pending tobacco deal has everybody chatting, of course. If it ultimately is approved by Congress and the courts, the tobacco industry will admit that smoking is lethal and addictive. If the deal doesn't go through, tobacco executives presumably will stick with their tried-and-true lies.

During negotiations, tobacco officials implicitly asked with usual gall, ``What's it worth to you to get us to tell the truth?''

Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop described them so well: ``Remember, the tobacco companies are a sleazy bunch of people who misled us, deceived us and lied to us for three decades.''

They should have their mouths washed out with carcinogens.

But let's be reasonable. Nothing personal was intended when the cigarettes were made that doomed my friend to a gruesome death. It was just business.

Now the emphasis should be on preventing youngsters from starting to smoke. Punishing tobacco companies would feel good, but so what? Better to work to build a society in which youths never start smoking.

Everything possible must be done to strip cigarettes of their images.

What most excites me about the proposed deal is that it would end the paid placement of cigarettes in movies and on TV. Recently I watched the movie ``Die Hard'' on TV. At the very beginning, for no reason, Bruce Willis, the tough-guy star, stops to light a cigarette. He inhales with satisfaction. That scene has to have an effect on young minds.

In the most recent movies, bad guys are more likely to smoke than good guys. But the bad guys, the defiant ones, may be the ones young viewers identify with.

As a college student, I wanted to smoke because it seemed so cool. I'd watch guys light up their dates' cigarettes in a graceful dance of flame and fingers. I tried a pipe and got sick all over again, thank God.

All the cool people I saw in movies smoked. It was what cool people did. Also, it seemed to me that smart people smoked. I associated good health with low intelligence.

Of course billions and billions of dollars were spent conditioning the public to see smoking - a teeth-yellowing habit - as cool.

Now billions must be spent undoing the damage.

I would strip cigarettes of their brand names and assign each brand a number. Winstons, for example, might be No. 5; Marlboros, No. 3. The idea would be to disassociate the cigarettes from the images that were built with billions of bucks.

Tobacco companies would never buy that, of course, because - dare I repeat it - they are trying to make money. Neither would they buy my brilliant idea to deliberately make cigarettes that cause smokers to puke.

What tobacco companies have bought is Congress. The Republican Party's two largest source of soft money in the past election were Philip Morris and R.J. Reynolds. Apparently tobacco is associated in some way with family values. Democrats, too, had hands out for tobacco money, but being the minority party, they got less.

Congress must be watched in coming weeks to see that it doesn't give the tobacco industry everything it wants. Again, every effort must be made to present cigarettes as they really are - a filthy habit that robs your body of health.Cigarette brands should have numbers, not names MEMO: Mr. Lackey is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu