Big Smoke, Big Bucks!

Big Smoke, Big Bucks!

Budget balancer?

Monday, April 21st 1997 — Who would have guessed it? Newt Gingrich on the Dole!? You betcha! Witness the climax of one of the biggest Congressional scams ever to be perpetrated on the American people.

Here we have Newt Gingrich coming to the well of the House and saying, with a straight face, that he will pay the $300,0000 "fine" -- excuse me--"levy" against him. Okay! You got me. I'm a smoker. Sometime during my eighteenth year on earth I got the idea from the Marlboro Man. So now I'm hooked and as a two-pack a day puffer, hopelessly dependent on that chemical cocktail whipped up and later denied by tobacco company executives, I have little hope of quitting anytime soon. I often quip that I'll kick the habit the week following my first coronary. A joke with a bitter edge.

Now, with their backs to the wall, tobacco executives are already maneuvering on Capitol Hill to get a series of laws passed that would inoculate them against billions of dollars recovered by smokers in lawsuits filed across the nation and based on recent admissions and revelations that big tobacco knew what they were doing when they lured me, and tens of millions into Marlboro Country.

While I'm too proud to blame some tobacco ad-executive for my habit, my reptilian brain somehow senses I've been duped. So now what?

The plan emerging from Virginia, South Carolina and the rest of Tobaccoville goes something like this: "We'll give you a few hundred billion to treat smoking-related illness. In exchange you'll give us national immunity from lawsuits."

There doesn't seem to be any reason to give tobacco companies a break. After all, what's in it for Americans? Well, they tell us, for one thing, we'd all become, sort-of, partners in these wonderfully profitable corporations. An added benefit would be to stockholders -- particularly tobacco company executives who would see their stock prices surge - maybe as much as 50% if they became immune from litigation. You see, tobacco companies themselves won't be paying the $300 billion over 25 years as rumored. Smokers will, as the purveyors of broad-leaf raise prices in direct proportion to the "settlement" amounts. In fact, it's a no-lose situation for tobacco. Gee, maybe they're right! And think of all those jobs we'll save.

Add to this the big incentives that politicians have to make this deal. Just take a look at the biggest political givers in the country and you'll find the Big Three tobacco companies right there at the top. So, at first glance this looks like a deal made in heaven for everyone except smokers.

I wonder when some lawyer will figure out they can sue the liquor, wine and beer industries for selling that poison? Between cigarettes and booze we won't have to worry about balancing the budget. Gosh, maybe that's what this is all about ?