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By JERRY HEASTER - Columnist
Date: 05/26/98 22:15

The surprising success of the tobacco industry's attempt to defend itself from its foes may signal a growing public awareness that this fight is about more than discouraging teen smoking.

The Senate's decision last week to delay a vote on a bill to raise cigarette taxes and expand federal regulatory power over tobacco served notice that Washington's political leadership sees at least some downside risk in its attempt to gouge Big Tobacco.

Whereas the industry never had much success defending itself as a legal enterprise selling a legal product used mostly by law-abiding consumers, a new public relations tack apparently has struck a responsive chord with the public. The most visible element of the initiative has involved a huge television ad campaign in America's major media markets supported by the industry and its allies.

The focus of the campaign is the tax burden it would create for average working folk who happen to be smokers, the way it would expand government power and the probability of how it would be likely to create a huge black market.

The elitist nature of the resentment sparked by the campaign's success was reflected in a recent story in The New York Times, which described a character in one of the commercials as "a sweaty waitress with earrings the size of onion rings." It was a clever line, but snooty to a fault because it clearly drew the battle lines in this issue.

About one-fourth of the U.S. adult population smokes, and many are working-class folk on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. What Washington essentially proposes to do is impose a large tax increase on those least able to pay for it. Until recently, many in Congress figured this could be done without political risk for two reasons: Not only are smokers widely reviled as a class, but the crusade presents itself primarily as a movement to protect young people from taking up the evil weed.

When the Senate delayed its vote on the legislation, a proponent of the proposal accused Senate leadership of wanting to protect the tobacco industry more than America's children. Although research shows convincingly that teen smoking is more a function of peer pressure than industry advertising, the youth card has always been the most effective weapon in the anti-smoking deck.

The flaw in the anti-smoking strategy, however, has been its obsession with plunder. If the goal were really to protect society in general and youth in particular from tobacco use, the crusade would be for prohibition rather than higher taxes on legal sales of the product.

It could be, at long last, that Americans are beginning to see through this deception. At least Capitol Hill's willingness to back off temporarily indicates second thoughts about the fairness of the crusade's potential economic consequences. While anti-tobacco interests accuse the industry of cleverness and sophistication in defending itself, nobody has been more disingenuous in this struggle than those trying to further their interests by plundering the tobacco business.

There have many casualties in this war, but truth has been perhaps the most visible. Meanwhile, the shabby treatment of those who choose to continue smoking has been a national disgrace, given that these people are doing nothing more than availing themselves of a legal product from which they derive pleasure.

Jerry Heaster's column appears Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. To share a comment, call (816) 889-7827 and enter 2301. Send e-mail, including a telephone number, to jheaster@kcstar.com.

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