By Norman E. Kjono

From an April 24, 2001 press release published by the Nicotrol-sponsored Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, "New Study Proves Higher Cigarette Prices Prevent Teens From Becoming Smokers," quoting William V. Corr, the campaign's executive Vice President, and advocating additional taxes on cigarettes:

"Raising cigarette taxes is a win-win situation for states. It protects kids from smoking and raises much-needed revenue for states facing budget shortfalls that threaten vital programs."

Everyone likes a win-win situation, so Mr. Corr's pronouncement will undoubtedly garner much interest. After all, why not "Save the Children" through taxing a "Target" product?

While there are numerous arguments, well supported by tobacco control's own data (see our recent TAXING TEENS, for example), that disprove the theory new taxes materially reduce youth smoking, we believe history speaks clearly to the issue. History says that not only are Mr. Corr and the campaign deceiving parents and legislators, but they are doing so to line the pockets of their pharmaceutical sponsors and to keep their own gravy train delivering the grant bucks.

In contrast with Mr. Corr's statement we quote one of his tobacco control colleagues as reported December 20, 2000 in The Seattle Times, when it published an Associated Press article "Smoking Prevention Fails a Big Test," byline Paul Recer, about the self-described failure of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center's youth tobacco use school intervention that began in 1984. According that article, the center's programdescribed as a "social-influences" experimentwas a failure because there was no significant difference between smoking rates of children in the program and a control group. Mr. Recer quoted a University of Washington researcher:

"It simply didn't work," said Arthur Peterson, Jr., the project's lead researcher. "It was a surprise. It was a disappointment."

How can the failure of a program for which one hase been monitoring statisitcs fifteen years possibly be a surpirse? Tobacco control knew from their own databases precisely what its programs were producingmore kids who smokeand aggressively continued doing so for years.

To which we add that, as documented by the University of Michigan's "Monitoring the Future Study" Table 1. youth smoking data (see PUFF, THE MAGIC CAMEL, Page 3) during 1992 to 1997 intervention years of tobacco control's Project ASSIST High School Seniors who tried smoking, became daily smokers, or smoked in the past 30 days increased by +5.8 percent, +43.0 percent, and +31.3 percent respectively. And those increases (see PUFF, THE MAGIC CAMEL, Page 2) occurred during a period of sustained increases in cigarette taxes

Which means, of course, that the new youth daily smoker source consumer base for Glaxo/SmithKline's NICORETTE, NICODERM CQ, and ZYBAN products, plus Johnson & Johnson's NICOTROL, increased by 43.0 percent, as well. Considering that NICOTROL pumped more than $200 million in special-interest grants to allegedly anti-tobacco activists through its Robert Wood Johnson Foundation during the 1990s, and that Glaxo/SmithKline pays the American Cancer Society an annual fee to use the society's seal in peddling its nicotine products, we already have a win-win-win: Pharmaceuticals win, through a stabilized and expanding source consumer base for their nicotine and smoking cessation products; tobacco companies win, having creating more youth smokers for the first time in decades; and special-interest advocacy groups win, through assuring that the mercantile goods are produced for their sponsors, which keep the tobacco control grants flowing.

That's one crafty camel: Joe Camel now directly funds through the tobacco "settlement" activists who presided over boosting by 43.0 percent the number of High School Seniors who become daily smokers!

And, as an added benefit, those 43.0 percent more youth smokers can now pay more taxes on their cigarettes, to fund expanding medical insurance payments to Glaxo/SmithKline and Johnson & Johnson. In the process, state health programs become dependent on tobacco money, which is a non-sequitur, in the first place..

Which says Mr. Corr's latest tax scheme is, in fact, a lose-lose-lose: Kids lose, through dramatically increased youth smoking rates; consumers lose through mandated higher costs for legal products; and state's loseif one accepts anti-tobacco's claims about the economic and health costs of smokingthrough funding treatment for 43.0 percent more smoking related illness in future years.

And considering that under most state's proposals for new tobacco taxes the revenues would go almost exclusively to pharmaceuticals and tobacco control activists, we reasonably ask what vital state programs would be saved? It seems to us that anti-tobacco is up to its old, and now-well-established tricks: "Vital" is defined as what funds the interests of themselves and their sponsors. Kids, consumers, and taxpayers being distant second cousins; poor relatives that one throws a token bone to on occasion.

With the pharmaceutical special-interest deck so clearly stacked in their favorand children, consumers, and taxpayers being underhandedly dealt from the bottom of that deckwe have two questions: What responsible parent, fiscally conservative legislator, or informed consumer in their right mind could regard pronouncements from the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids to be credible? Who can take seriously the latest pronouncements self-described failures?

Perhaps the Campaign for Tobacco-Free (but certainly not Nicotine-Free) Kids isn't a failure. It seems to us that we are observing the final stages of one of the most successful stealth mercatile sales campaigns in the 20 century.

But can parents, children, consumers, and taxpayers truly afford such "success"?