NEWTON'S LAW: OLD JOE MUST PAY THE PRICE FOR SOME VACILLATING POLICIES

There must be days in the arena of government when the signals of regulation seem as haphazardly arranged as the elements of trail mix.

It isn't necessarily that bureaucracy has grown to such a gargantuan size that the left hand of policy never knows what the right hand of protection is doing, though there must be plenty of that. Rather, we find instances where all parties are enlightened, and still nothing makes sense.

Old Joe might be feeling the vague weight of this phenomenon.

You, of course, know Old Joe. The nation's medical community insists that you do. Go ask your kids.

Old Joe is a cartoon camel, a smug-looking creature that is the corporate logo for Camel cigarettes. In a study released three months ago, the Journal of the American Medical Association said six-year-olds recognized Old Joe as readily as they did Mickey Mouse.

I am inclined to question these findings. Kids who are six tend to watch television more than they read magazines, where Old Joe holds forth. Mickey is on TV; Joe isn't. Also, kids go to Disney World and bring back ears. No children go to Camel World and bring back humps.

These doubts notwithstanding, the medical community has a festering antagonism toward Old Joe, who would probably be as benign as most cartoon camels were it not for the manipulation of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Doctors think the cigarette-makers are targeting children with their advertising. On Monday, the government said it tended to agree.

Stand by for some federal ambivalence.

Surgeon General Antonia Novello, the nation's leading health official, asked that the Reynolds company voluntarily remove Old Joe from its advertising. She said the company should "stop marketing practices that entice this impressionable age group."

That Novello and the government are lending their names to this effort is noble, since their assumptions regarding the advertising are probably correct. Less high minded, however, is the government's waffling strategy for addressing its own attitude about smoking.

This gets into the very fickle world of behavioral control, a venue where federal authorities generally show themselves as ham-handed. American liberties allow citizens to indulge risky pursuits. Trouble is, when the government disapproves, it too often lacks the heart to practice the tough love (i.e., interference) necessary.

Companies engaged in these enterprises remain in a baffling limbo, pushing always for a profit but not one that will call too much attention. If you're a beer company and the government is fretting over drunk driving, you advise folks to "know when to say when" ... and you keep brewing.

If you make cigarettes, which the government says is all right, you try to sell them. That is the way of business. Who would have guessed a watercolored camel could spur such business? Now, the company is being told to knock it off with the successful logo, that the camel is too lovable, too "smooth." Joe, say the critics, must go.

Instead, will the surgeon general prescribe a more fitting corporate logo, something like Larry Lung, a blackened pulmonary mess?

Federal health officials would just as soon cigarettes disappear on the painstaking schedule of governmental meddling. There will always be highly paid lobbyists and pontificating senators from the Carolinas to delay this execution.

Or better yet, while it stalks the tobacco growers at home, the government helps them cultivate business for their products overseas. The fastest growing markets for American cigarettes are in Europe and Japan. Wouldn't that be a hoot? The government retires Old Joe domestically, but sends him to the Orient in revenge for all those auto imports.

By its fumbling and ineffectual actions, the government proves it can chart no clear course regarding the politics of smoking. Old Joe isn't the problem. But it looks like Old Joe is going to pay the price.