Those hungering for pound of tobacco flesh will end up hungry

Column By Bill Straub, The Post's Washington correspondent

WASHINGTON - Anti-smoking activists have taken their eyes off the prize. Now, despite protests to the contrary, it seems almost certain there will be no tobacco settlement this year or anytime soon.

Steve Goldstone, president of RJR Nabisco, the nation's number two cigarette maker, stepped before an audience at the National Press Club on Wednesday to announce that his company was pulling up stakes, leaving behind the pact it entered into with 40 attorneys general last year to limit teen smoking.

The reason is simple. For reasons best known only to political pollsters, lawmakers have taken what looked like a reasonable deal (in need, granted, of some fine tuning) and transformed it into an Inquisition, injecting almost $150 billion in new costs to the companies and extracting all the reasons Big Tobacco entered into the agreement in the first place.

Activists, predictably, have assailed the announcement as a smoke screen (pun fully intended).

Ahron Leichtman, executive director of Cincinnati-based Citizens for a Tobacco-free Society, insists, ''No deal with the tobacco industry is good news for the American people.'' He calls the industry's objections nothing but "hollow protests.''

What's more, Leichtman said, Congress can pass tobacco legislation without the industry's acquiescence. ''Congress does not need to go on bended knee to beg for tobacco industry permission to protect the public health,'' Leichtman said.

A lot of that's true, as far as it goes. Congress can, indeed, pass laws doing practically anything its heart desires.

But the question becomes will it? And is the country better off with a tobacco deal that gives the industry some thing of what it wants, or with no tobacco deal at all?

Lost amid all this rhetoric is the purpose of the original agreement. Health activists were rightly concerned about surveys that showed an extraordinary increase in teen smoking. Just what has led to this phenomenon is open to debate. But an argument certainly can be made that the industry's advertising tactics - like the employment of fun-loving Joe Camel - had something to do with it. What isn't open to debate is that steps need to be taken to do something about it.

But what? Cigarette advertising already has been banned from the airwaves and some states, like Maryland, have prohibited billboard advertising near schools. All, it bears repeating, for a legal product.

So attorneys general and other lawyers on the anti-smoking side, including Cincinnati's own Stan Chesley, extracted promises from the industry to not only voluntarily limit its advertising on all fronts but pay a monetary penalty if certain reduction targets were not met. In return the industry sought protections from class action suits and damages incurred prior to the agreement.

It's worth noting that hundreds, if not thousands, of suits have been filed against the industry over the past few years. The cigarette manufacturers almost always win. But Big Tobacco is facing a war of attrition. The cost of defending these suits has been staggering, in the billions, and they decided to deal even though history shows they can win.

That sounds reasonable, not like a ''sweetheart deal for the companies'' as described by Leichtman. Studies show that most smokers start during their teen years. It's reasonable to expect, therefore, that if you undercut teen smoking you'll eventually undercut adult smoking as well.

But that wasn't good enough for an anti-smoking community that has, in the past, been embarrassed by the superior tactics of the tobacco industry. They aren't, it seems, interested in coming to some sort of reasonable accommodation. They're interested in revenge. And that's going to wind up scotching any deal.

They're right. You don't need the agreement of the tobacco industry to pass a law and a lot of things can be accomplished, like closer regulation by the Food and Drug Administration. But activists are dreaming if they think they can stifle the industry's First Amendment rights without some sort of tacit agreement.

And what makes anyone think the House is going to go along? One of the cornerstones of the latest proposal is a $1.10 per pack increase in the cigarette tax. House Republicans are adamantly opposed to any - any - sort of tax in crease, good, bad or indifferent. A tax hike is not going to get pushed through without the industry's agreement. It's not going to happen.

Sure. A few small, relatively insignificant steps can be taken to tighten the noose on the tobacco industry and some of those efforts will do some good. But it won't reduce youth smoking. And if you don't reduce youth smoking, you're not going to reduce adult smoking.

But anti-smoking activists are convinced they're finally getting their pound of flesh, which apparently is more important to them than the real prize. They shouldn't be surprised if it tastes like crow.

Publication date: 04-10-98