I pride myself for having become callous to the kind of state repression and hysteria going on about tobacco in these times. The San Francisco articles, however, gave me the chills. The training of young people as "bait" for catching merchants during sting operations carries with it a strong odor of "youth education" and "youth heroism" that is Stalinist -- not in degree, but certainly in spirit.

Listen to the voice of youth:

"The teen tobacco trend disgusts 16-year-old Isabelle Belkind," says the article, "one of four students who helped Berkeley police crack down on merchants who sold cigarettes to them.

'The point is that we have to inform the merchants that it is not OK to sell (tobacco) to minors', Belkind said at a press conference outside Berkeley City Hall".

It is interesting that Ms. Belkind chooses (or has been coached to choose) the word "inform" in connection with a sting operation, rather than "enforce," "punish", or "harass". She has been trained well in the art of politically correct verbal hypocrisy.

Here's the program: use youngsters to sting ordinary citizens who are trying to make a living. Teach the kids how to squeal on these people -- and possibly ruin them for an error in judgement. Let the youngsters then be rewarded with press coverage and the praise of the state, so that more young people will be encouraged to do the same.

It is appalling to see the kind of effort North American governments put into the elimination of tobacco. Using as justification the usual statistical spin doctoring, the government employs enormous taxpayer resources in a campaign to satisfy the political needs of the antismoking lobby, supported at the root by irresponsible politicians of the calibre of Bill Clinton, who is seeking the aggrandizement of his popularity through the persecution of an entire class of citizens.

Do the parents of these children have no reservations about the use to which their children are being put? Do they remember the tales of institutionalized youth informants that once emanated from the Soviet Union -- usually to widespread distaste in North America? Do they see no parallels? What are we really teaching to the new generation with this? That smoking tobacco is a bad thing? Not particularly. There is a more profound, more general social message that is sent when a method like this is employed.

We are telling young people that reporting on your neighbour is not only acceptable, but laudable and rewarding. As the tobacco wars escalate, we can predict that in the near future this kind of squealing can (and will) be extended as a weapon against parents who smoke in the house. It will be rationalized, of course, on the much publicized "health hazards" of second hand smoke.

The irony of this morally backrupt approach to "health information" and youth "protection" is that it won't produce the intended results. Clearly, the great fanfare about smoking has stimulated the defiance of youth. Teen age smoking is at an all-time high. This is, of course, the result of a grave political error made by the health nazis who are trying to uproot the use of tobacco by the year 2000.

The logical course of action would be to tune down the antismoking fanfare and let long-term smoking rates among the young begin to decline once again -- at a natural pace and in the manner set by society in its normal courses. But this requires vision and intelligence, two gifts not very common among antismokers and politicians as they rush against the mysteriously important millenial clock. Instead, in perfect tune with their philosophy, they step up the agenda with the only tool they know: more repression. Real education is not even an option at this point.

The "brilliant" idea of stinging business operators has its origin in California, but the Canadian government is rushing to copy the example of the US, now clearly the political "master race".

This is how it works: youngsters who have been properly brainwashed about the dangers of tobacco are now recruited to pose as teen agers eager to get a pack of "smokes". The youngster (who is selected to look much older than his age to faciliate entrapment) gets into the store, asks for cigarettes, and if the poor merchant completes the transaction, it is big trouble, and not only because of the fine. The name and address of the store and its owner can be published in the local newspapers, and a list of stores that have been tagged more than once will soon get posted on the Internet!

The message of the state, and the implied threat, is obvious: We don't fool around with the control of this perfectly legal product. Never mind your common sense: if you make a mistake in assessing the age of an individual, we will punish you, and ruin your business.

By publishing your name and address in the media, we will expose you to the danger of community retaliation and vandalism to the extreme consequences.

This isn't far-fetched: the recent "absolution" by a Vancouver, B.C. court of a vandal who threw paint balls on a billboard advertizing a cigarette brand sends the clear message that in these times, damaging property is OK, as long as it is for the good cause of persecuting tobacco.

Of course, none of this nonsense will deter the young from smoking -- it will just make the challenge of getting away with it even greater. But it will create a whole new breed of "criminals". Young people barely over legal age will go from store to store, armed with I.D., and buy cigarettes for the under aged at a very lucrative profit. Unemployed individuals will consider this also, as they discover that this is an easy, non-taxable profit that flows straight into the pocket, and rounds off their incomes. In some B.C. schools, the price for one cigarette is already a dollar. We have elevated tobacco to the status of an exciting drug, and a symbol of defiance.

Common sense indicates that this is not going to work. And the price for this failed attempt will be high, as human nature exploits the opportunity for persecution that has been created. We are teaching our young that ruining a honest businessman is OK: "Why don't we squeal on Joe Blow today, just to see what face he's going to make? He has been rude to me, anyway! And -- you know? -- perhaps we are even going to make the papers!"

To complete this disgusting scenario, the "sting operation" behaviour will create an environment of distrust among the youth: "Is he a squealer, or even a 'collabo'? Do not smoke when he's around, he may report you."

Or: "Let's not tell anyone where we get the smokes, otherwise they will get stung."

Or, even: "I know he's a 'collabo', let's beat the shit out of him!". Not having forgotten the time when I myself was a young teen-age boy, I would guess the last option to be the most common, and -- to be quite honest -- I wouldn't blame the beaters a bit! Kids work out their own rough justice in the school yard.

In the end, all that we'll obtain from turning our kids into Youth Enforcers is the rationalization of moral, psychological, and physical violence. Politicians and antismokers know that very well, but then the whole idea is meant to intimidate both the youth and adult population for the purpose of dictating the state's will at any cost. Coercion and intimidation are OK when used to impose "what's good for you." You shall live in fear.

Using and targeting youth for the purpose of coercion is certainly not a new idea, but until recently, it hasn't been very respectable in North America. Our political class, already devoid of ethics, has acceded to the demands of fanatical groups disguised as health crusaders, and are now filling the new generation's cultural and moral voids with what I call moral antimatter.

While this antimatter may yield some marginal result in the protection of physical health, the cost is the infliction of mortal blows to human, social, and moral health, and the killing of personal choice, freedom, and individualism.

North America wants to present itself to the 21st century clean of all vice -- and with this comes a sordid sense of guilt, and contempt for enjoyment at its peak. It's just nasty puritanism with a new face for a new century. In a thoroughly secular and materialistic world, we still yearn for the old redemption, but on terms we can understand: "body" therefore substitutes for "soul", "healthy" substitutes for "holy", and the perfection of the clean and healthy body becomes a rough equivalent to salvation. No matter if the integrity of science is corrupted in the process. No matter if twisted values have been taught to the next generation. It doesn't even matter if North America has to lie to itself, and to the world. The achievement of a long-lived, as well as a controlled and sterile society is all that matters.

As the great libertarian Pierre Lemieux has foreseen, this new, planned society "will substitute harassment for flirtation, alcoholism for enjoying wine, nicotine delivery devices for cigarettes, and risk for pleasure."

This is the moral inversion, and the spiritual perversion we are passing on to our children.

When a social system rewards the young for hurting their peers; when lies, surveillance and spin-doctoring replace science, honesty and truth in the scale of values, that system doesn't just fall beneath contempt: it slips beyond repair. The fate of the Soviet Union has taught nothing to North America. We are now like the ones we once fought.

I thought that many millions of people died -- not too long ago -- to prevent this shame from ever happening again. I see now I was in error. Here it is, disguised in white coats, stalking the halls of government ministries and health departments, masked as concerned activism, and child protection.

As a baby boomer, I am ashamed of my generation, a generation unable to see that the war on tobacco is just the beginning of the war on liberty and choice.

Personally, I'd rather be dead than submit to a society where opinion engineering and state- planned behaviour are the only options. But this is the legacy we leave to our youth.

I just hope that they will have the wisdom to flush it away.

Gian Turci