LETTERS: TIME TO DECLARE WAR ON TOBACCO

To the editor:

President Clinton has just launched another salvo in the continuing attack on Joe Camel. Never mind that poor Joe has been dead for nearly a year now. Joe himself is merely a representative of the reprehensible industry that peddles a deadly poison to our children. Joes demise, it seems, in no way diminishes one important fact: Tobacco has been elevated to the position of public enemy No. 1 and must be dealt with as the greatest evil facing America today.

Having now seen the light, I would like to encourage my fellow Republicans to get on the bandwagon in the fight against tobacco. Clearly, the issue is too important for us to continue to attempt to deal with through simple over-regulation and ever-increasing taxation. I call on my fellow Republicans to propose a ban on tobacco, followed with an all-out war on those dealing in the substance. We should appoint a tobacco czar to oversea the war, and he should be given extensive, unconstitutional powers to deal with this menace, as others czars have been given to deal with other crises.

If we are to go to war against a substance which is killing our children and ruining the lives of those who are fortunate enough to survive the ravages of secondhand smoke, then let it be a real war. Take the fight out of the court rooms and congressional chambers and into the fields and streets of Third World states. In rural southern states, tobacco cartels control the legislatures and have even corrupted the federal powers of our government. Enough is enough. Fight them and defeat them for the good of our children, for the future of America.

No doubt our military, tired of sitting on their duffs monitoring peace agreements in far-off places, would welcome the opportunity to drop a few tank loads of cancer-causing defoliants on Kentuckys rich farmland. Our military surely has a few barrels left from the drug raids in Colombia. Now that peace has been declared in the war on drugs, the scourge of tobacco can be dealt with head on. We must defeat tobacco at all costs. We cannot, not for the sake of votes nor campaign contributions, weaken in the face of such a perilous foe. Surely, it is our desire to punish those purveyors of death, and not merely to tap their pocketbooks as an alternative source of revenue. The loss of the massive amounts of tobacco tax revenue, and the social programs envisioned to be financed by increasing them, must be regarded as acceptable casualties. As long as we allow tobacco to be peddled on the streets, Big Tobacco will continue to line its pockets at the expense of our defenseless children. Shut the tobacco sellers, producers and growers down for good. Let the new motto of the Republicans be "Damn the revenue, full speed ahead."And then, of course, we could turn our interest to the deadly purveyors of fatty foods.

SHAPLEY R. HUNTER

Tamms, Ill.