'FESS UP, GOVERNMENT ALSO FUNDS TERROR

DO you remember those $3.5 million government ads that ran during the Super
Bowl -- the ones linking drug use with terrorism?

"Timmy," a somber-looking teen-ager, stared at the camera and said: "I
killed mothers. I killed fathers. I killed grandmas. I killed grandpas. I
killed sons. I killed daughters. I killed firemen. I killed policemen." A
stark, guilt-laden message from the U.S. Office of National Drug Control
Policy flashed during a brief pause: Drug money supports terrorism. If you
buy drugs, you might, too.

Then, Timmy added: "Technically, I didn't kill these people. I just kind of
helped."

Well, now it's the finger-wagging government's turn to 'fess up to its own
indirect role in funding terrorism -- through sky-high cigarette taxes. Let
me explain.

Next week, the alleged ringleader of an organized-crime cell based in
Charlotte, N.C., will go on trial for providing cash and military-style
technology to Hezbollah. This is the Lebanese-based guerrilla group
designated a terrorist organization by the State Department in 1997. It has
been tied to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network and to the 1983 Marine
barracks truck bombing in Beirut, which killed 241 American servicemen.

Federal prosecutors say that Mohammad Youssef Hammoud, his brothers and
more than a dozen others collaborated in a major cigarette smuggling, money
laundering and immigration fraud business to support Hezbollah activities
abroad. The ring members purchased cheap cigarettes in Charlotte, where the
tobacco tax is just five cents a pack, then hauled them to high-tax
Michigan, which raised tobacco taxes from 25 cents a pack to 75 cents in
1994. Hammoud's operation is believed to have reaped millions of dollars of
profit over a four-year period.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the FBI says the men used
the money to buy "night vision goggles; cameras and scopes; surveying
equipment; global positioning systems; mine and metal detection equipment;
video equipment; advanced aircraft analysis and design software; laptop
computers; stun guns; radios; mining, drilling and blasting equipment;
radars; ultrasonic dog repellers; (and) laser range finders."

Suspected cell members reportedly owned mounds of terrorist propaganda,
including a video with Hezbollah guerrillas in suicide bombing gear
listening to a leader chant: "We swear by the blood and the scattered body
parts of our children and the tortures of our prisoners that we will answer
the call and will continue to detonate ourselves to cause the earth to
shake under the feet of our enemy, America and Israel."

The indictment of one of the ring members says he traveled to Lebanon three
years ago and delivered a $3,500 payment to a Hezbollah military commander.

If not for taxaholic bureaucrats, this suspected terrorist operation
wouldn't have gotten off the ground. States addicted to nicotine-stained
revenue are all too happy to participate in the sanctimonious charade of
condemning the vice while pocketing a chunk of the profits. But those who
advocate punitive tobacco taxes to reduce smoking and "protect kids"
continue to ignore the connection between sin taxes and illegal sales.
Every state along the East Coast that has slapped astronomical and
regressive taxes on tobacco has been invaded by increasingly savvy and
organized smugglers.

It's the same story in Canada and Sweden, where even the socialists have
finally figured out that they should give up on their quasi-prohibitionist
experiment and cut tobacco tax rates to put smugglers out of business.

In New York, which recently imposed the highest tobacco tax in the nation
($1.50 a pack), police are bracing for an inevitable bootlegging bonanza.
Yet, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg wants to tack on another $1.50 tax
to cigarettes. That's sure to win him brownie points with the men and women
in blue -- many of them smokers themselves -- who will now have to shoulder
the added burden of chasing down droves of organized smuggling rings from
low-taxing neighbor states, military bases, Indian reservations, Internet
retailers and Mexican operatives. And possibly more Middle East terrorists.

The feds have used taxpayer funds to draw a tenuous link between drug abuse
and terrorism. But the link between high tobacco taxes and terrorist
funding is far stronger. Sure, greedy state and federal lawmakers didn't
directly fund Hezbollah terrorist killers.

As "Timmy" put it so well, they "just kind of helped."