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All Editorials and Op-Ed columns from this morning's Washington Post.

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Anti-Smoking Hysteria

One of our freedoms is the ability to do or say things that are unpopular, as long as they don't harm others. The smoking controversy is about this freedom as well as health, but that has been lost in the hysteria to ostracize smokers and punish tobacco companies. The hysteria -- embodied in suits against tobacco companies and strident anti-industry rhetoric by politicians -- is so intense that the biggest companies are now in talks to settle. By press reports, Philip Morris and RJR might have the industry pay $225 billion to $300 billion over 25 years and submit to more regulation. In return, it would be spared further liability.

Massive reparations will strike many people as a fit retribution for merchants of death. The reaction is completely wrong. The cost of a settlement would largely be passed along to smokers. The industry would create a compensation fund for "victims" and then raise prices to pay for it. That would represent a disguised increase in cigarette taxes, which now average 57 cents a pack (24 cents in federal tax, with various state rates). Suppose the price of a pack rose by 50 cents, a 27 percent jump from the current $1.85. The proper questions are who would pay the extra tax and who would receive the benefits.

Well, we know who would pay: the 25 percent of Americans who smoke. They consist heavily of the poor and lower-middle class. About 70 percent have no more than a high school diploma. We don't know exactly who would benefit, but the candidates are clear: (a) smokers -- or more likely their heirs -- if they can show they should be "compensated" for "damages"; (b) the lawyers who would represent "victims" in compensation claims or receive a guaranteed payout from the fund; and (c) states that would be paid to offset their allegedly excessive health costs from smoking.

In short, a compensation fund would be an intricate shell game, with the tobacco companies mainly as middlemen. All smokers would be taxed to pay "damages" to some smokers or their families. In the process, we'd create a welfare program for lawyers. Finally, states would receive a hefty slice. Of course, states that now feel overburdened by smoking's costs could raise their cigarette taxes. But a tax increase would, presumably, be unpopular. So 23 state attorneys general have filed suits against the industry, trying to use the courts to enact hidden nationwide tax increases. For this the attorneys general project themselves as heroes.

Now, I am not defending the tobacco industry's public dishonesty. Nor am I mimicking its posture that cigarettes are no riskier than toothpaste. Smoking is unhealthy. The Centers for Disease Control estimate that it causes about 400,000 Americans to die prematurely, with an average loss of life of about seven years. I don't smoke and, as a parent, will fight my children if they start. But otherwise, I don't think I have the right to impose my views. People have a right to choose. Punishing them for their choice denies their freedom. Rewarding them for the ill effects of their choice denies their responsibility.

Neither can be justified unless smokers lack choice or impose costs on others. Naturally, the anti-smoking ideology presumes (wrongly) that both conditions are true. Smokers are supposedly seduced by the industry's advertising, and once they start puffing, they can't stop, because cigarettes are addictive. Come on. Since the government's first anti-smoking report in 1964, almost everyone has known that cigarettes are dangerous. That knowledge is the main reason the proportion of smokers has dropped from 42 percent in 1965 to the present 25 percent. And everyone has always known that "kicking the habit" is hard, whether smoking is addictive or not. Still, millions have done it.

Indeed, the main reason there are fewer smokers today is not that fewer Americans start smoking but that more give it up. Consider. In 1994, about 77 percent of Americans over 26 had once smoked. But two-thirds had stopped. In 1974, only 65 percent of this group had ever smoked, but nearly two-thirds still smoked. The trends among the under-26 population are similar.

Nor do smokers -- and the tobacco industry -- impose huge economic costs on the rest of society. Just the opposite: Smokers more than pay their own way. They already pay steep cigarette taxes and, by dying early, create future savings in health costs, nursing home care, Social Security and pensions. Even without the taxes, the savings smokers create by early death may exceed the costs they impose by 40 percent, estimates Harvard economist W. Kip Viscusi. Just because this argument is freakish and awkward is no reason to ignore it. If smokers' shorter life expectancy magically vanished tomorrow, government costs would rise.

Finally, smokers don't pose a major workplace health hazard through "passive" smoke: what's inhaled by non-smokers. Secondary smoke may be highly irritating, but it's not a major cause of either lung cancer or heart disease. The scientific studies here are weak. Some find that passive smoke causes a small amount of cancer; other studies find no effect. These studies examined non-smoking wives of smoking husbands. On this meager evidence, a wider danger can be inferred only by assuming (dubiously) that workers face an exposure similar to that of wives of smokers.

It is smokers themselves who experience the pleasures and horrors of smoking. And that's how it should be. As a society, we ought to clarify that principle, and in this sense, a truce between the industry and its critics -- enacted into law by Congress -- is desirable. Such a truce would have the industry voluntarily surrender most (or all) of its right to advertise. It might also finance a modest education program for teenagers on the dangers of smoking. In return, it would receive immunity from legal liability. The compact would dispose of the argument that industry ads prey on the ill-informed young, while also denying smokers any reward for their poor health choices.

Given today's hysteria, I doubt anything so evenhanded is possible. The anti-smoking zealots essentially want to shut the industry. Trial lawyers see the tobacco companies as a huge pot of gold. Politicians see them as fabulous punching bags. The press portrays the story as a struggle of good and evil, barely questioning anti-smoking rhetoric. Hardly anyone in this informal coalition of intolerance even senses that freedom is an issue.