The oddest thing about the current national crusade against tobacco is not its frenzy--our culture lives from one frenzy to the next--but its selectivity. Of course tobacco is a great national killer. It deserves all the pummeling it gets. But alcohol is a great national killer too, and it has enjoyed an amazingly free ride amid the fury of the New Prohibitionism.
Joe Camel has been banished forever, but those beloved Budweiser frogs--succeeded by even cuter Budweiser lizards--keep marching along, right into the consciousness of every TV-watching kid in the country.
For 26 years television has been free of cigarette ads....
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