Who needs taxes to kick the habit?

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Shamelessly, Bill Clinton trotted out 1,400 children in red anti-smoking T-shirts Wednesday to pressure Congress to approve a tobacco-control bill. ``This bill,'' Clinton told the gathering, ``is our best chance to protect the health of our children, to keep them from getting hooked on cigarettes.''

Actually, the bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, has little to do with children and much to do with government's addiction to taxes, a nasty habit that's ruining us.

Under the pretense of moral outrage, McCain is trying to foist a huge tax increase on the poor and low-income -- $1.10 per pack, or about $516 billion over 25 years. Half of that will will be paid by smokers with annual incomes of less than $30,000. And a good portion of it will enrich the fat-cat lawyers who devised this scheme.

The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. And the kids continue to inhale, unlike our cigar-chewing president. If Congress truly wanted to stop children from smoking, it would outlaw cigarettes. Of course, that's not going to happen. Congress won't kill the goose that provides the gold.

But Republicrats who back this plan may kill the gilded honker anyway. If approved, McCain's bill will boost a black market that already undercuts tax revenue -- and will trample the tobacco industry's First Amendment rights, to boot.

Oddly, people who revere freedom of speech ignore the fact that this bill denies the right to advertise a legal product. Among other things, the bill would ban outdoor and Internet ads, characters like the Marlboro Man and Joe Camel, tobacco logos and sponsorship of sporting events.

In the National Review, Robert A. Levy wrote, ``We treat flag burning and Ku Klux Klan orations as protected speech; we even insulate ``gangsta rap'' from the censors. But if Tiger Woods shows up wearing a jacket emblazoned with a Joe Camel emblem, our new speech guardians will hold the executives of R.J. Reynolds accountable.''

Congress should have been done extorting Big Tobacco by now, but it got greedy. Major tobacco companies were ready to pony up $370 billion this spring but walked away from negotiations when lawmakers kept bellowing: more, more.

Dollar signs, not smoke, got into the politicians' eyes and blinded them to this bill's hazards.

D.F. Oliveria/Opinion writer