HAVE YOU SEEN the ads for The Truth? They’re the ones with the annoying, rebellious youths campaigning to expose the harmful effects of cigarettes and the wicked ways of the tobacco industry. The ads are designed to be, as they said on Madison Avenue ten years ago, edgy.

They’re also creepy. The Truth ad campaign is paid for by a group called the American Legacy Foundation, which was created by the mammoth 1998 tobacco settlement. So the American Legacy Foundation and The Truth are funded by the tobacco industry, which they’re trying to demonize and destroy. Talk about political coercion. It’s a little bit like China where after they execute you, the government bills your family for the bullet.