Despite Victories, the Fight Against the Deadliest Drug Is Far From Over : Smoking: The industry is more aggressive than ever, plotting strategies to hook youngsters here and abroad.

These are heady times for anti-smoking advocates. In just the past few years, smoking has been restricted in public places, prohibited on short flights and is about to be banned on almost all U.S. flights.

This is remarkable progress in a stunningly short time. Does it mean the fight for smoke-free air and lungs is over? Hardly. As supporters of the airline ban savor their last triumph of the 1980s, they must set their sights on even bigger goals for the 1990s: elimination of cigarette advertising--especially ads aimed at children--and control of cigarette exports.

Winning these battles won’t be easy. The tobacco industry lost the airline fight, but, in the words of its lobbyist, is “keeping its powder dry.”

To win, it will have to neutralize public opinion and the truth--no longer a simple task for the tobacco lobby. The airline ban climaxes a period of dramatic change in America’s attitude toward smoking. Once fashionable, smoking is now anti-social, a victim of truth and an aroused citizenry.

The truth is this: Tobacco is the deadliest drug in the world. Last year, it killed 390,000 Americans--more than all who died from AIDS, drugs, fires, car crashes and homicides combined. It also kills thousands of “involuntary smokers”--persons forced to breathe “second-hand” smoke.

That the tide has turned--that the tobacco industry is now on the political defensive--is a historic development. It is a moment for celebration on how far this country has come in combating its greatest health problem.

It is also a time for reflection on how far we have to go. Despite its setbacks, the tobacco industry is more aggressive than ever, plotting new strategies for hooking youngsters. These strategies are working, aided by the film industry and the U.S. government.

Cigarette advertising is bombarding American teen-agers (especially girls) with appeals that exploit their eagerness to experiment and their sense of immortality. For the first time in years, more college freshmen are smoking than before.

To reverse this trend, Congress should ban cigarette ads. But we need not wait for Congress. We can begin here, in Hollywood, with a commitment by film makers to cease cooperating in the tobacco industry’s sneakiest strategy yet--the “paid placement” of cigarettes in children’s films. How many parents were appalled, as I was, when they saw the leading man in “Roger Rabbit” smoking Lucky Strikes and a cartoon character selling Camels. Hollywood sends many messages. Let the next one be that it condemns the paid promotion of cigarettes in films.

Americans also should abhor tobacco marketing abroad. U.S. cigarette manufacturers, alarmed by shrinking domestic sales, hunger for new markets. Their target: the Third World. As a tobacco company executive conceded, “You know what we want? We want Asia.”

Tragically, it is within their grasp. In Japan, American cigarettes have zoomed from 2% to 10% of the market, and nearly 20% of female students now smoke, compared to 3% of their mothers. In Taiwan, four out of five smoking teen-agers now prefer American brands.

Where American cigarette companies are unwelcome, they manipulate trade deficit worries. At their request, for instance, our trade representative is investigating Thailand’s “unfair” bans on imported cigarettes and advertising.

With government help, American tobacco companies are exporting a “cancer epidemic” to a Third World already overwhelmed by disease. As former Sen. Frank Moss said, “The only difference between this (campaign) and an outright military invasion is that cigarette-smoking deaths are not as prompt.”

It is shameful for Hollywood to promote tobacco for profit. It would be even more shameful for our government, a self-proclaimed promoter of humanitarian values in other contexts, to encourage tobacco exporting and discourage foreign governments from resisting the deadly invasion of American cigarettes.

Tobacco export control must be the highest anti-smoking priority of the 1990s. In his declaration of war on drugs, President Bush said, “This scourge must stop.” Tobacco, too, is a drug--the deadliest of all. The dumping of this drug on the Third World is a “scourge” that also must be stopped.

While nonsmoking advocates may take pride in their recent successes, they cannot rest until they have helped to secure equal protections for our children at home and our friends abroad.