No one can seriously challenge the assertion that multinational tobacco companies have targeted the Third World countries as markets for their products. They need to find new markets because Western countries are clamping down hard on tobacco smoking. It's generally agreed, too, that advertising or the deluding publicity of tobacco companies should be carefully monitored and regulated to protect minors and to insure that the tobacco companies aren't lying to the public about its products.

But once again it appears that the global community is embarking on a global crusade to stamp out sin and protect people from themselves. In the past three decades, a global anti-tobacco movement has gained momentum, and its progress resembles that of two other public health crusades-- alcohol prohibition and the War on Drugs--.both of which have been abject failures.

This public health crusade has targeted tobacco and it is creeping towards prohibition. Smokers in many countries have been forced out of public accommodation and into the streets under laws that don't even provide people the option of choosing to enter a smoke-filled room. Anti-smoking groups have even begun demanding that smoking be banned in public. In Holland, Amsterdam's famous marijuana houses must now renovate or close to comply with new Dutch anti-smoking legislation. Meanwhile, cash-strapped governments are slapping high taxes on tobacco.

And now powerful public health officials in the U.S. are talking openly about prohibition as an option in the campaign against tobacco This past June, for the first time, the U.S. Surgeon General went on record supporting a total ban on tobacco products.

In testifying before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee investigating smokeless tobacco and other so called reduced risk tobacco products, Surgeon General Richard Carmona said, I would support banning or abolishing tobacco products. If Congress were to choose to go that way, that would be up to them. But I seen no need for any tobacco products in society.

As history shows, when Uncle Sam goes into moralistic mode and embarks on a mission to save humanity from itself, other countries usually follow. The War on Drugs is the classic example. After its acquisition of the Philippines in 1898, the U.S. became the leader of a world-wide anti-opium movement that eventually encompassed a host of other mind numbing and altering drugs, such as heroin, cocaine, marijuana and LSD. With the U.S. in the lead, countries passed more and more laws in the belief that legislation could eventually eliminate drug use, while embarking on an aggressive campaign to wipe out supply.

Still, more than a century later, what have we got to show for it? More than one hundred countries are now involved in the manufacture, sale and distribution of illegal drugs. International drug trafficking has become a $500 million a year illicit enterprise, second only in size to arms trafficking.

We in Bangladesh are seeing the effects of the War on Drugs. As the war spreads, Bangladesh is being drawn tighter into the net of international drug trafficking Reports indicate that Bangladesh is not only being used as a transit route for international drug trafficking, but it's also becoming a lucrative market for the consumption of drugs. Heroin and phensidy are pouring into Bangladesh through its northern border and are now being distributed in other parts of the country. Designer drugs like ecstasy and speed are available in certain well-to-do areas of Dhaka. What is happening to Bangladesh is being replicated in many other developing countries and illustrates the absolute failure of the global approach to drug policy after a century of prohibition.

Moreover, the U.S., and many other countries for that matter, never did learn anything from Uncle Sam's movement to ban alcohol. In 1917, the U.S. government passed the 18th amendment to the U.S. constitution (ratified in 1919), and the total prohibition of the manufacture and sale of beverages exceeding.5 percent alcohol content went into effect in 1920. Interestingly, during the 1920s, when alcohol prohibition was in force, many states enacted tobacco prohibition laws.

But little did the amendment's proponents and supporters realize that their moralistic intentions would lead to the emergence of organized crime on a prodigious scale and to the accumulation of huge illegal profits that would spur the growth of criminal activity.

It's true organized crime existed in the United States before prohibition, but as one scholar explained; all the living pre-prohibition mobsters, extortionists, racketeers and criminals would have remained in the lower depths without the passage of the 18th Amendment. Prohibition not only gave them opportunity, it gave them respectability and legitimacy. Prohibition not only provided a means of making vast sums of money, it created a need for organization, cooperation and syndication.

Today, the war on drugs, along with the growing anti tobacco movement, have spawned powerful, well-entrenched public welfare bureaucracies in most western countries, which have a vested interest in regulating and eventually prohibiting tobacco.

Drug and alcohol prohibition are classic textbook examples of Economics 101 in action. When you have strong consumer demand for a product, legal or otherwise, there will always be a supplier willing to do anything, including breaking the law, to get it to the market. It has always amazed me how conservatives who preach about the virtues of the free market and how government should stay out of it tend to forget the basic lesson of economics when it comes to trying to control drug and alcohol use. Putting tobacco prohibition in place will create an unsatisfied consumer demand that will bring a new type of supplier to the market: organized crime syndicates. Large-scale cigarette, cigar and smokeless tobacco smuggling syndicates will appear. Black markets will develop. The profits would be astronomical and most likely far bigger than those reaped from the trafficking in illegal narcotic drugs. Consider that in the U.S. alone there are 45 million tobacco smokers as compared to 17 to 20 million smokers of marijuana.

Law enforcement will try to clamped down on the tobacco kingpins, but they would move their operations to more hospitable countries. More corruption, violence and black markets would invariably follow. As the war on tobacco continued to fail, unimaginative and opportunistic politicians would call for more limitations to individual rights and freedom as a necessary sacrifice society has to make to combat powerful and well-financed drug trafficking groups. The costs of financing this new drug war would skyrocket, and so would the casualties.

The World Heath Organization has suggested that to cut demand developing countries like Bangladesh should slap higher taxes on tobacco products. This is nonsense. This would just increase the danger to public health while spurring the growth of the illicit tobacco trade, encourage criminal activity, foster corruption and create a flourishing black market for

cheaper cigarettes to satisfy consumer demand. Don't get me wrong. I agree that tobacco products pose serious dangers to public health. I agree, too, that we need to blunt the subtle but misleading propaganda that the giant multinational tobacco companies spew. But we need to look for ways to the reduce demand for tobacco products without increasing the crime rate, corrupting public institutions and infringing upon personal freedoms. In short, we need to control tobacco use, not embark on a futile, moralistic and self-defeating campaign to stamp it out.

Ron Chepesiuk is a Full Bright Scholar and Visiting Professor at Chittagong University.