It’s only a matter of time, sooner rather than later, that an editorial will appear in The New York Times advocating the prohibition of tobacco products. At least that’s what any rational reader would take away from the paper’s two latest broadsides against the mammoth industry, which were pegged to the not so shocking revelation that “light” cigarettes are just as dangerous as “full-flavored” brands, and a study by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health that found the amount of nicotine in a cigarette has increased an average of 10 percent since 1998.

At this point in the early 21st century, any person who believes that smoking is a harmless habit is a moron. As with any addiction, whether it’s alcohol, crack or heroin, gambling, fast food or speed-racing cars, it’s up to the individual to make a decision about the risks and then proceed at will. As a longtime smoker, I’m certainly aware of the hazards to my health and yet I’ve foolishly continued the habit, knowing that even though my lungs are so far miraculously spotless, that could change as soon as next year’s physical. It’s a cross to bear, and hard to justify to my wife and kids, which is far more upsetting than the busybodies who wave their hands in the air even as I smoke outside.

The Times, on August 28th (“The Safer Cigarette Delusion”) and Aug. 31st (“Raising Nicotine Doses, on the Sly”), in a departure from the usual diatribes about President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Joe Lieberman and other perceived enemies of the United States, wastes space on the obvious. Still, no Times article would be complete without insulting its readers’ intelligence. In the first editorial, the writer says, “The decades-long campaign by the tobacco industry to dupe smokers into thinking that ‘low-tar,’ ‘light’ and ‘ultra light’ cigarettes are a safe haven has been astonishingly effective…What most [smokers] don’t realize is that these cigarettes are every bit as risky as the full-flavor versions that they have largely replaced.”

Please. The reason I switched to “light” cigarettes about 25 years ago was not because I bought the “safer” propaganda, but rather because the standard Newports I was partial to were causing a hacking cough. My progression to Merit Ultra Lights is probably fairly typical: As a teenager, I started with Kools (the unfiltered kind when available), then Alpines, Newports, Merit menthols, regular Merits and finally the current brand. The Times supposes that the “compensation” phenomenon causes smokers to inhale more deeply on the “lighter” cigarettes or consume more of them. That’s nonsense: There is a noticeable difference at first, but that disappears about a week later, and then you’re back on schedule.

I have no delusions about the tobacco companies, although I wouldn’t echo the Times editorialists in labeling them as “rouges” or “rapacious,” and realize that the advertising—that which still exists—is probably misleading and deceptive. No difference, though, from the ads that make drinking beer look glamorous and sexy, or a Burger King double whopper a healthy meal. Or, for that matter, the full pager in the September 1 Times promoting Ketel One vodka. 

But of course that Times editorial I imagined above, demanding that tobacco be made illegal, will never appear. Not only is there the failed 18th Amendment to consider, but more importantly, even the anti-business Times (except when it comes to its own dubious practices) knows that such a law would instantly create an enormous dent in the economy. A black market for cigarettes wouldn’t yield the enormous revenues from “sin taxes” that currently exist, and would put countless numbers of “ordinary” Americans out of work.

The Times calls for more federal regulation on the tobacco industry, as if that would make any difference at all. Nither of the editorials call for the end of the mindless, if lucrative, class-action litigation against the purveyors of tobacco, brought by avaricious trial lawyers who bring into court cancer-stricken smokers, often including people who were alive at the time of the 1964 Surgeon General’s report about the inherent dangers of a tobacco habit.

One might think, even if in a hallucinatory trance, that the Times, which is so besotted by sin taxes would rather suggest that marijuana become legalized and sold at the local bodega than lash a dead cow. This might result in instant revenues for the state and federal governments, and the vast reduction of not only the criminals who peddle the stuff, but a decrease in the prison population, which still includes far too many people arrested on pot charges.

That’s an editorial I’d clip and tack on my bulletin board, although it would take a revolution at the newspaper—the sacking of the sanctimonious publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., for starters—and perhaps the installation of a libertarian like Reason’s Jacob Sullum as editor.

The Times’ New England property, the circulation-troubled Boston Globe, also had a nicotine snit last Friday with an editorial headlined “Pushing nicotine.” Pointing to Mass-
achusetts’ Department of Public Health study, the paper lamented that the tobacco industry could not, at least currently, be properly punished. An excerpt: “But hemmed in by an earlier decision, [federal Judge Gladys] Kessler concluded she could not order the industry to hand over billions in profits and instead prohibited it from using terms like ‘low tar’ or ‘ultra light.’”

The Globe, which also included a dumb edit that day about the “curse” of Johnny Damon leaving the Red Sox, didn’t suggest that McDonald’s or Burger King or Coca Cola or Anheuser Busch hand over their “billions of profits” even though the products those companies sell contribute to severe health problems. Maybe the daily believes that a heart attack caused by fatty foods is somehow nobler than one as a result of smoking.