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Rewind to '94: Smokers dwindling 

The tobacco industry is a long way from surrender and shows every sign of fighting the most recent FDA scientific finding as if the industry's life depended on it. Which it may. If the FDA goes along with the advisory, a strong possibility is that nicotine will be regulated as an addictive substance. It will be increasingly hard for the industry to sell cigarettes on the domestic market. The price rise has driven away most non-addicted smokers. Programs to break the nicotine addiction are improving. The mean irony is that more government effort is paid for by a dwindling coterie of addicts. What with health-care reform, the load on smokers surely will get heavier as their numbers continue to dwindle.

-- Columbian editorial, Aug. 7, 1994

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