We talk about the sale of cigarettes as if it's legitimate commerce, when in fact this is a product that debilitates and kills...

I don't get it.

The rhetoric that accompanied the latest increase in Indiana's cigarette tax makes no sense to me.

"I lost 48 percent of my business last time," moaned Sheree Banet, owner of Smokey's Discount Tobacco Outlets in Jeffersonville, Corydon and New Salisbury. "We'll lose about 20 percent of our cigarette sales" to Kentucky, warned Mark Kaiser of Kaiser Wholesale Inc. in New Albany.

You won't hear anybody complain that sales will drop if fewer people drink rat poison. That's because they don't let anybody sell the stuff for human consumption.

We talk about the sale of cigarettes as if it's legitimate commerce, when in fact this is a product that debilitates and kills. Selling smokes is trafficking in disease and death.

Sure, outlawing cigarette sales would drive the business underground, create marketing opportunities for organized crime and turn significant numbers of ordinary Americans into criminals. But over time, and overall, it would save lives.

Of course, it's not going to happen. Congress never has had the guts to make selling cigarettes illegal. In fact, it's now on a path toward letting the Food and Drug Administration regulate the advertising and sale of cigarettes, but not ban either nicotine or tobacco.

Indeed, as a recent issue of CQ Weekly pointed out, a panel of tobacco and health experts has told the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee that prohibition would be a bad idea.

Some misguided lawmakers who still want to give the tobacco industry a break, despite what it has done to its customers, now argue that the Federal Trade Commission or some other agency would be better to regulate smokes. But Jack Reed, D-R.I., gets it right: "Finding fault with FDA is a way of stopping any type of progress with respect to regulating what's in cigarettes."

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels found himself arguing both sides of the cigarette marketing dilemma in last week's visit to Southern Indiana.

At one point he defended the 44-cent increase that jacked up the state cigarette tax to almost a dollar and raised the average price per pack at Hoosier outlets to $4.25. He insisted that "no one wants to hurt anyone's business." But moments later he pointed out that raising the price will keep lots of folks from taking up the habit. And, he added, "That was always the main objective."

Well, you can't have it both ways. Convincing smokers to quit is going to hurt the cigarette business.

It's tough to sell some Americans on the notion that smoking is really bad -- especially those of us old enough to remember those lovely post-coital smokes in movies, or the cigarette-dangling cowboys in old TV commercials. But if you worry about the cigarette makers and tobacco marketers, consider this from USA Today:

Last Aug. 17, a federal judge found that tobacco firms marketed and sold their lethal products by deceiving the public for five decades about the risks of smoking. The duplicity and manipulation, she wrote, "continues to this day."

Two weeks later, the industry returned to court brazenly seeking a loophole that would allow it to continue the deception overseas.

On Aug. 29, Massachusetts health officials reported that the average nicotine delivery in scores of cigarette brands had increased by an average of 10 percent during seven years ending in 2004. Nicotine is what hooks smokers and keeps them hooked.

In "Now Voyager," when Paul Henreid fires up another two cigarettes, Betty Davis chirps, "Oh Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon … we have the stars." Well, she was wrong. What they had was a habit.

As Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Liberty Commission, reminded senators a couple of months ago, smoking kills perhaps 400,000 people every year. "If that's not a pro-life issue," he said, "I don't know what is."

!!! Annonce !!! Forum Marlboro.