THE TINPOT TYRANTS OF CAPITOL HILL

Let's get one thing straight. I don't smoke. No member of my family smokes. I have never owned stock in a tobacco company, and I don't know a single farmer who grows the stuff. There, now ...

Did you happen to see any news reports on last month's televised congressional hearings concerning the tobacco companies? I watched some excerpts on C-SPAN, and was thoroughly disgusted at the treatment accorded tobacco executives by the little Tinpot Tyrants of Capitol Hill. Led by diminutive Congressman Henry Waxman, D.-CA, the committee chairman, one congressman after another took turns bullying, goading and threatening the people who run America's tobacco companies. It is doubtful that any mob gangster was ever treated so roughly during any of the celebrated hearings of the '50s and '60s.

The treatment these liberal congressmen accorded to law-abiding tobacco executives was so out of line, so abusive and so self-righteously mean-spirited that I was amazed that none of the executives did what I would have done. I would have taken it for just a minute, before firing back with something like this:

"Listen, Mr. Congressman, I don't know who you think you are, but let me tell you one thing. Last I heard we don't have dictators in this country. You should darn well stop acting like one. I resent being treated like a common criminal. Here's the deal: You will treat me with the respect one American citizen owes another, or I will remove myself from your hearing room until you learn some manners, respect and consideration.

"As a law-abiding American citizen who pays my taxes and serves my community, state and nation in many other ways, I have had quite enough of your abusive and bullying tactics. You are speaking to executives representing companies who employ several million people engaged in the manufacture and sale of legal and highly regulated product. May I also remind you that in a representative democracy, you work for me and all other Americans. Grow up, come down off your pedastal and learn some manners, or I'm leaving. The choice is yours."

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The late, great H.L. Mencken rarely spotted without a cigar once defined a Puritan as someone who lives in constant fear that someone, somewhere, is having a good time. In the steely, cold-eyed zealotry of Congressman Henry Waxman, we see the New Puritanism so characteristic of the liberal movement he leads. All the hallmarks of zealotry are present: mono-mania, self-righteousness and, most especially, humorlessness.

It's clear the New Puritans are out to ban smoking entirely. In fact, a New Puritan bill moving through Congress would outlaw smoking in virtually every possible public place, leaving only the private home as a potential sanctuary. How long before they ban it there?

This is madness. Whatever happened to freedom of choice? Ah, comes the answer from the Smoking Police: "Secondhand smoke, a/k/a Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS)." And, incessant repetition of faulty science has persuaded Americans: a March CNN/Time poll found that 78 percent of Americans believe that secondhand smoke is "very" or "somewhat" harmful.

Anyone who believes this should spend 15 minutes reading an article entitled "How Bad is Secondhand Smoke?", published in the May 16 National Review, written by Jacob Sullum, managing editor of Reason magazine. An excerpt: "... A smoker breathes in hot, concentrated tobacco smoke and holds it in his lungs before exhaling. A nonsmoker in the vicinity, by contrast, breathes air that includes minute quantities of residual chemicals from tobacco smoke. `ETS is so highly diluted that it is not even appropriate to call it smoke,' says Dr. Gary Huber, professor of medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center ..." Noting that many of the compounds in tobacco smoke are unstable, Sullum writes, "It is not safe to assume even that a nonsmoker is exposed to the same chemicals as a smoker. ... Even if exposure to ETS were analogous to smoking, the doses are so small that it's not clear they would have any effect. Many chemicals that are hazardous or even fatal above a certain level are harmless (or beneficial) in smaller doses ..."

There's more, much more in the article. Sullum pretty much demolishes the faulty and politicized scientific studies that have helped to fuel the hysteria of the Smoking Police.

I think smokers should be considerate. But I think we nonsmokers should, too. Didn't that used to be called live-and-let-live?

In an article published earlier this year concerning the increasingly popular pastime of holding a "Smoker", the St. Louis Post-Dispatch published the comment of Jim Tom Blair IV, whose greatgrandfather was a Democratic governor of Missouri in the '50s. Blair, who had organized a highly successful Smoker at the Ritz-Carlton, quipped, "Look, there's more to life than vitamins and roughage."

New Puritans, beware.