Kickin' It?

For his final question of his final broadcast of "Meet the Press", Tom Brokaw asked Barack Obama about the habit he had vowed to break in the White House: "Have you stopped smoking?"

The President-elect admitted he had "fallen off the wagon" at times.

Brokaw pressed harder: "That means you haven't stopped."

Obama -- denying his interviewer a straight answer -- smiled and replied, "I have done a terrific job under the circumstances of making myself much healthier. You will not see any violations of these rules in the White House."

In 1993 former First Lady and current State Secretary Hillary Clinton officially banned smoking at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This preceded a time when her husband - ahem - occasionally enjoyed a cigar in the Oval Office.

Obama wasn't afraid to bum smokes off voters while on the campaign trail. Has he since kicked the habit? A stroke of his pen would indicate so; today Obama signed into law the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

And you thought the government was only getting its paws on your car and your credit. Now, in the latest demonstration of federal regulation, Congress wants to curb your cravings.

While states like Florida and Massachusetts have recently imposed a tobacco tax, the new federal law will allow the F.D.A. to fool around with the formula. Removing thousands of toxins from cigarettes will render them unpleasant to the taste, say the feds, and will prevent teens from lighting up.

Not a bad move, considering the government's role for generations as the pusherman and lone victor in this very dangerous -- and very prosperous -- drug game of Big Tobacco.

The law will even require cigarette manufacturers to cut the word "light" from cartons and signs beginning next year. No more Camel Lights, Marlboro Lights, Parliament Lights, et cetera.

Will this cause users to suddenly quit? Let's not blow any smoke here.

While this legislation certainly seems naïve right now, it may eventually prove brilliant; no one has ever thought to just make tobacco taste worse. Simply banning smoking would never work, but selling tobacco that tastes like mud may just do the trick. Spending our taxes on this will likely get us nowhere, but for the sake of public health, this is one risk we should allow Congress to take.

The American Cancer Society claims tobacco products kill more than 440,000 users every year, and let's not forget the hell smoking inflicts on your health insurance premium.

Our elected leaders and their lobbyist cronies never before seemed to care about the American addiction. They're mistaken if this new band-aid will suddenly cause the country to quit cold turkey.

Let's face it: this new law may be the closest the government will ever come to winning that money pit we know as the war on drugs. But don't hold your breath.

-P.F.