ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times

DATE: Monday, March 10, 1997                 TAG: 9703120014
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1    EDITION: METRO 
COLUMN: BEN BEAGLE
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE

SMOKES SOON TO BE IN HANDS OF BOOTLEGGERS

Before we go any further here, let me make it perfectly clear that I've been off the old Winston Light 100s for more than 10 years, and I've got the extra blubber to prove it.

I don't want anybody saying that yours truly here is a tool of the tobacco industry. I know smoking isn't good for you. I also know that quitting is good for your local haberdasher when you have to upsize your entire wardrobe. Upsize. I love that word.

All I want to say here is the government rule that requires people who look like they may be 27 or younger to show identification before they can buy a pack of cigarettes is kind of strange.

Some people will say that this is a cruel caprice of the overweening federal government. I just say it's strange.

And go ahead and tell President Clinton I said that. I'm mad at him. Did I ever get invited to the Lincoln bedroom? No. I didn't even get a phone call from Al Gore.

You have to wonder if the Lincoln Bedroom has HBO, but that is not germane, as nobody ever said in Radford, to our subject here.

Listen. When I was 18, I looked like I was 27. At 27, I looked like an extremely worried person of 40. Maybe it was all those cigarettes I was smoking then.

The only time I was ever carded was at the drugstore when I was 50. The clerk wanted to give me a discount for persons over 62.

I don't know if the president has thought about some of the side effects of this new rule.

Thousands of over-27 women and men who never had a puff in their lives are going to rush to cosmetic surgeons. They're going to want the thrill of being carded down at the convenience store:

"It was great, Marge. This guy asked me for my driver's license before he would sell me a pack of Viceroys - which I gave to this kid who was hanging out on the corner."

And I'm afraid we'll see another era of bootlegging in this country - in which the mob will stockpile huge quantities of cigarettes by sending out members who look well over 27 to buy them.

Smokers under the age of 18 will be paying $50 a pack for bootleg cigarettes, delivered in fast, black cars.

So don't be surprised the next time you're at the convenience store and there's some tough-looking guy in there with a huge bulge in his coat who buys out the entire stock of Merits.

Why is it, I wonder, that I suddenly want a smoke?

LENGTH: Medium:   53 lines