Oh, what on Earth is Allan Rock on about now? Banishing "mild" and "light" descriptions from cigarette packages, as if huge looming photographs of diseased lung tissue and discoloured teeth hadn't got the bloody point across already.

This is such bizarre and protracted hectoring, for a government that has it within its power to just ban the stupid things and be done with it. I can't even imagine a comparable scenario in the history of free enterprise and public health.

"All right, you can sell chicken with salmonella, but we get to tax it, and you have to festoon the package with pictures of people vomiting." "Go ahead, sell hits of angel dust at the corner store, but we want warning labels on it about psychotic derangement and criminal violence." "Of course you can distribute bottled water filled with ant poison, but we absolutely must insist that you depict dying people clutching their stomachs in agony on the label. And we get to tax it."

Social historians are going to have a field day with this phenomenon 100 from now. It's just taken on a highly peculiar character of its own that has no parallel in our policies governing alcohol or obesity or gun control or pesticide use or anything else whatsoever.

The only advantage I can think of to smokers of having "mild" ripped off the labels of the brands they prefer is that they won't have to get into confusing discussions with shop clerks about what they're trying to purchase.

"I'd like some du Maurier cigarettes please."

'Would you like Special Light, Ultra Light, Light Light, Unique Light, Deluxe Light or Menthol? Or Regular? Will that be King Size?"

"Uh ..."

Of course, there does happen to be a taste difference between cigarettes at either end of the spectrum, perish the thought, since they're all manufactured by Satan. Export A, for instance, which makes one explode in a coughing fit with tears streaming out of one's eyes, differs from Matinee Extra Mild, which tastes like air being sucked through a straw, at least until you cut off the filter, which you inevitably do, whereupon it tastes sort of like an Export A, but not really.

So if the labels can't be qualified any more, then people who smoke are going to have to buy their cigarettes on the basis of taste memory. Hmmm ... I think I'd like the du Mauriers in the silver package because I seem to recall they had less of a kick than the ones in the red package, although maybe it was the other way around.

An anonymous health official was quoted in one of the papers this week as suggesting that the tobacco companies could distinguish between their products by calling them, for example, Benson & Hedges 1, Benson & Hedges 2, and Benson & Hedges 3.

That's fine. Except that it's stupid. If you want to know what the difference between 1, 2 and 3 is, then the companies presumably won't be able to say: "Well, this product tastes milder or lighter," because that's "a lie of Big Tobacco," so what are they going to say instead? Smoke Benson & Hedges 1s because ... well ... they're a different number than Benson & Hedges 2s. People who like the number 1 should smoke these ones, and those who are fonder of the number 2 should go for those ones.

Can you picture the marketing campaign? OK, let's target our 3s at ... oh ... the ladies. Our in-house research shows that Canadian women, when given the choice, tend to be more attracted to illustrations of diseased lung tissue, and also the number 3. Men, on the other hand, tend to respond better to pictures of overflowing ashtrays, coupled with the letter B.

"Hey, can I bum a cigarette?"

"Sure, but you might not like them. They're Benson & Hedges Overflowing Ashtray Bs."

"Oh yeah, my dad used to smoke them until he got tired of having to say that every time he went to the store, said it made him sound like a raving loon. So he switched to a pipe."

"That's a good idea. Nothing like knocking back after a fine dinner of barbecued Diet Lard with a bottle of Molson Light in one hand and a pipe in the other."

Right then.

Here's what I think: If I had a dollar of my taxes back for every dollar the federal government spends on dreaming up new ways to tie Big Tobacco's shoelaces together under the dinner table, I'd spend my savings on a detox clinic for people who smoke.

Smoking is an addiction, as powerful and insidious as heroin. People who smoke do not deserve to be ridiculed and glared at and sin-taxed and made to puzzle out the absurd, hieroglyphic differences between Number 1 and Number 2.

They need help getting off the drug, and help does not come in the form of prim-lipped disapproval. Smokers need their own Betty Ford Centers. And until we understand that -- that smoking is not about being rude, and it's not about being dumb, it is about being addicted -- then we're just going to act like small-minded bigots, making ourselves -- not just smokers and their vendors -- look like fools when all is done.