Smoking Out Hollings

All politicians say things they later regret.

Michael Dukakis said: “This campaign is not about ideology; it’s about competence.”

George Bush said: “Forty-seven years ago to this very day (Sept. 7, 1988) we were hit and hit hard at Pearl Harbor.”

And Richard Nixon said: “I am not a crook.”

Now we have Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), a man I have always liked. I briefly covered his 1984 presidential campaign--it lasted only briefly--and he was a charming guy, a guy I loved to listen to.

Not any more.

Last week in opposing a ban on smoking on U.S. airline flights, Hollings said: “The Indians were smoking when we got here!”

And you thought the era of great debate was dead.

Congress banned smoking on domestic airline flights shorter than two hours on April 23, 1988. This ban is due to expire April 23, 1990.

The Senate Appropriations Committee voted last week, however, to ban smoking on all domestic flights, no matter how long they are.

The ban makes sense. Cigarette smoke causes lung cancer and other diseases. And airplanes have lousy air circulation systems. As studies have shown--and as any nonsmoker can tell you--smoke from the smoker’s section of a plane is circulated very quickly to the nonsmoking section.

The logical answer is to ban smoking on all flights.

This is not logical to Hollings, however. All politics is local, the old saying goes, and Hollings comes from a tobacco-producing state.

So in the committee hearings he spoke vociferously against the ban. And afterward, there was this fascinating scene, as reported by Alan Fram of the Associated Press:

“Minutes after the Senate Appropriations Committee’s decision last week to expand the smoke ban aboard airliners, tobacco-state Sen. Ernest Hollings stood in a Capitol corridor talking about the meeting.

“Interrupting the conversation, a bald, rotund man in a suit sauntered up from behind the lawmaker and reached out to shake his hand.

“ ‘Thanks on behalf of R. J. Reynolds,’ he told a smiling Hollings (D-S.C.), who had just been on the losing side of two votes aimed at diluting the prohibition. ‘It was a good try, but it was stacked against us.’ ”

Not that the fight is over. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) won’t rule out a filibuster when the bill comes to the Senate floor and there is still the House to contend with.

And, as the exchange between Hollings and the R. J. Reynolds lobbyist shows, the tobacco producers know a thing or two about lawmaking. They know money fuels the engine of democracy. According to Common Cause, the cigarette industry gave members of Congress $261,000 in speaking fees last year, more money than any other industry.

You can see why: The cigarette industry needs more than 1,000 new smokers each day to replace those who die each day from smoking.

Even most smokers support a ban on airline smoking. A poll sponsored by the American Assn. of Respiratory Care showed that 51.7% of smokers approve a ban on smoking on airlines, and nearly 60% of smokers favor the current short-flight ban.

But Hollings has a rejoinder: “The Indians were smoking when we got here!”

It is true. Smoking is an American tradition. The Indians were doing it when we came here to steal their land. And I think they gave us tobacco as revenge.