Wash Post Says Split Tobacco Bill [01/21-1]

EDITORIAL; A TOBACCO BILL, Washington Post [01/20/98]

The tobacco debate in the past few weeks has detoured through just about every issue except what ought to be the central one of how to achieve a reduction in smoking, particularly among the young. Before they do anything else, the president and Congress need to seize the moment and pass legislation to do that, as a separate matter. The question of what to do with any money that happens to be raised should be taken up afterward and on its own. It will be the ultimate abdication if, in the end, the money tail is allowed to wag the tobacco dog. Let it serve to reduce the debt for a year; what's wrong with that?

Among the most important things the government can do to reduce the incidence of smoking is to raise the price. The president has accepted the notion that an increase of $ 1.50 a pack would begin to be an effective deterrent. The right way to jack up the price that much -- simplest, surest, most efficient -- is to raise the federal excise tax by that amount. But of course that creates its own instant complications.

Republicans say they're opposed to a tax increase -- unless perhaps the proceeds can be used to finance an offsetting tax cut. The president, before he even proposes a device for exacting the money, has begun to let it be known how he would spend it -- on increased federal child-care subsidies and biomedical research, for example. The states, meanwhile, having brought the lawsuits that in effect caused the tobacco companies to seek legislative protection, think the bulk of the money should go to them, in part as compensation for past Medicaid spending brought on by smoking illnesses. Suddenly the tobacco issue becomes a complicated exercise in fiscal federalism, a.k.a. fighting over money.

Nor is that all. If the companies pay the levy, whatever it is called, as distinct from having their customers pay it at the cigarette counter, does the payment become deductible like other costs of doing business, thereby reducing their income tax? The effect of deductibility would be to shift a large part of the cost of the program to the general taxpayer.

None of these issues should be allowed to sink the basic tax (by whatever name) and price increase. Nor should they become pretexts for delay. If they threaten to do so, they should be set aside, the money placed somehow in escrow or fiscal limbo until another time, when its disposition can be fought over separately. Such a shelving of the money is not beyond the inventiveness of legislative man.

A price increase is not the only thing that needs to happen. Mr. Clinton and Congress ought to make explicit, lay to rest questions about and possibly strengthen the Food and Drug Administration's authority to regulate nicotine as a drug and cigarettes as the instrument of its delivery. Restrictions need to be placed on the advertising and marketing of cigarettes; enforcement of the laws against sales to minors needs to be strengthened; greater efforts need to be made to encourage and help people to quit.

That's what ought to be passed. If they can't solve the other issues, let those issues be the ones to wait.

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