From the WSJ Opinion Archives
SCENE & HEARD
The Nicotine Constituency
One day, smokers aren't going to take it anymore.
Boston has always liked to think of itself in the same breath as New York--slightly tweedier but still cosmopolitan, an Eastern enclave leading the country with its progressive politics and its progressive taxes. That's why, even as much of the Northeast went dark in last week's blackout, Massachusetts politicians were hard at work to make sure their citizens wouldn't light up either.
The state specified that cigarette sellers could no longer use discounts called "buy-downs" from manufacturers to keep prices low. Bay State smokers will now face cigarette prices nearly comparable to those paid by New Yorkers, socked with a price hike last summer that brought a pack of butts to around $8 in Manhattan.
This is what passes for enlightened policy among both towns' liberal elites, though New York is still one step more fashionable, having also banned smoking in bars and restaurants.
A funny thing happened, though, during last week's blackouts. Everyone noted how much better New Yorkers behaved compared to the 1977 blackout, when arson and looting were commonplace. And all the while New Yorkers were smoking in candlelit bars. And neither the bar owners nor the police seemed inclined to stop them.
Smokers are a strange interest group. They could sway elections and capture entire states if they voted as a bloc, but they've been so beaten down about their habit that they won't even stand up for themselves. Before applauding, though, antismokers ought to ask themselves whether it's a really good idea to be breeding a pariah consciousness in an otherwise law-abiding 25% of the population.
Although New York's take from the cigarette tax hike is considerable, it's much less than expected because of an enormous outbreak of smuggling or quasi-legal tax avoidance. That has only riled up the enforcers further who've been chasing smokers down to shake every last penny out of their social pariah habit. Even Indian reservations, usually a political untouchable, have found that their sovereign status isn't sovereign when there are cigarette revenues to be had.
The enterprising Seneca, for instance, find themselves targeted by laws that forbid them from selling smokes to nonresidents. (Under this logic, presumably casinos could be restricted to residents, too?)
With giant holes in state budgets from coast to coast, governors and legislators are all chasing after smokers, the only taxpaying class that refuses to defend itself. Even hard-bitten places like Texas have lately been eyeing their Marlboro men greedily.
Worse, foreign countries--from Canada and Europe to Belize, Ecuador and Honduras--are now filing lawsuits against tobacco companies in U.S. courts. What government couldn't use a little more spending money? If American smokers are such a bottomless well of revenue, maybe we can get our hands on them too. Or so the logic goes.
Ecuador has dreamed up a suit in which the tobacco giants are responsible for cigarette taxes dodged by its own citizens. European governments are floating similar allegations. Canada has filed a $1 billion suit claiming a reimportation scheme deprived the country of revenue that it was rightfully owed.
Of course, by the time various governments have piled up several dollars of tax on a pack of cigarettes that cost less than a buck to produce, they've let loose a powerful engine of smuggling, corruption and tax-dodging that can't be corralled. Many of the lawsuits complain that tobacco companies don't knock themselves out to be sure that proper taxes are paid by downstream players in the business. But no business wants to take on the job of enforcing an unenforceable and self-defeating law.
It's time, perhaps, for governments to get a clue. Their efforts to stigmatize smoking are beginning to backfire, undoing the good work that has been done by others to make sure smokers at least understand the risks of their habit.
Canada, Brazil and some European countries have slapped enormous warning stickers on packs, with bold threats or gruesome pictures of the consequences, to little avail. Instead of persuading the unpersuaded, these efforts have aroused a new class of entrepreneurs who sell stickers over the Internet to cover the warnings. They're called "liberty labels" and are designed for "reclaiming cigarettes from the moral scolds."
The antismoking activists will insist that this is somehow a plot hatched by Big Tobacco to continue brainwashing the young and impressionable. But at the end of the day, smokers are grown ups. They know what they are doing. And they are finally speaking up for themselves.
The options are often witty and sometimes thoughtful: "Life is More than Longevity, "Smoking Causes Statistics" and "Smoking Creates Busibodies." And, as found on a British Web site, sometimes relay their message with gusto: "Smoking is Cool," "You could be Hit By a Bus Tomorrow," "Social Smoking Doesn't Count," and, best of all, "Smoking Makes You Look Big and Clever."
If this keeps up, smokers might even start voting.
Ms. Levey is an assistant features editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. This is her final column.
