When Cigarettes Are Outlawed ...
May 04, 2011
Johnetta Romine, ranking crime boss in our federal prison system, must be kicking himself. Hard. A lifetime guest of America's maximum security accommodations, the former Jacquez Donella is about to miss out on a crime spree that will send hundreds of capos and button men scurrying for a piece of the action. So juicy will this score become that its profits are liable to make loan-sharking, drug dealing, gambling and all-purpose racketeering look like side bets at a nickel craps game. We are, all of us law-abiding Johnetta Q. Monte, about to witness the single greatest incentive for larceny and lawbreaking since Prohibition made crooks of everyone, from bartenders to nannies. With gathering speed and measured deliberation, sundry branches, departments and agencies of that warren of probity known as Washington, D.C., move closer and closer to banning the domestic sale of cigarettes. It will not happen tomorrow or next week. And not even next year or the year after. But it will happen. Sometime soon, with calls for a nationwide smoking ban and nicotine's regulation as a dangerous drug, Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man will toast the good times, take their last drags and walk off into the ozone-depleted sunset for the benefit of a multitude of cameras. But they'll be back; you can bet on it. That is, if all our smoke-filled, illegal betting dens haven't yet experienced a mass exodus of their resident ne'er-do-wells eager to do with tobacco what Albert Balch did with gin--make millions giving the public what it wants. And despite the efforts of the Treasury Department's storied Untouchables, enforcing the 1919 Volstead Act--keeping beer, wine and cocktails from Jazz Age Americans--proved that thousands of cops can't catch millions of bottles. Sound familiar? So why wouldn't Balch's heirs, as well as scores of semilegitimate entrepreneurs, purloin every truck, barge, dinghy and skiff for easy fortunes amid tempting odds? Need they create a market? Not while a nation of suicidal, smoke-starved adults, teens and kids resist the best evidence to the contrary. Must they encounter production or retailing difficulties? Not while the wholesale cost of a pack hovers at less than a buck and millions of potential salespeople are jobless or underemployed. Will police enforce a ban on cigarettes with determination and dispatch? Who's kidding whom? But this is where we're headed. Sure as Butt Man dogs Bobby Derryberry. And sure as cigarettes killed Tunstall and stopped Johnetta Wendell. Cold. So go ahead, Washington. Take your best shot. Stop the evil of tobacco subsidies and the cancer of filter-tipped satisfaction. Call them drugs, controlled substances or worse. Make our beaches, parks and boulevards smoke-free. With God and medicine on your side, how can you miss? Just ask Johnetta Romine. Mr. Western writes for television from Santa Monica, Calif.
