PIPE BUYERS SAVOR DOCTOR'S REPORT - AND A GOOD SMOKE.

Byline: Art Vinsel

MY favorite curved Stanwell is tamped with Black Gold Plus, a rich vanilla blend awaiting a traditional wooden match to ignite its elegant savor, or else I'd be fuming at the tobacco-phobes.

The fresh air fascists are at it again, filling the air with second-hand self-righteousness.

But we pipe-smokers are, by nature and pleasant habit, a mellow lot. Unlike some we could name, we don't get uptight and hysterical.

And besides, a rarely quoted paragraph in the oft-cited Surgeon General's Report on Tobacco strongly suggests that at least some aspect of pipe smoking is good for us men in upper middle age. Read on for that fascinating fact.

The state of California, however, has launched a $22 million multimedia anti-cigar campaign funded by a 1988 initiative that raised taxes on tobacco products. That was a decade ago. Now the nicotine police are trying to raise tobacco prices yet again.

Wait a minute here while I light my pipe.

I learned of the newest drive to stamp out stogies at my favorite tobacco shop, Hugo's Humidor in San Pedro, while I was making a deposit on a handsome, reconditioned Savinelli briar pipe imported from Italy. It's a real bargain. Pipe tobacco can be, too.

The way I calculate it, four ounces of my blend affords 30 good smokes at about 20 cents each or a penny a minute for my modest pleasure. There are no calories.

What surprised millions of us who smoke pipes with due consideration - and without apology - was admission by the tobacco industry more than 18 months ago that its products, cigarettes specifically, are addictive and may be hazardous to one's health. Anything overused or misused can be. The tobacco people just had to be careful how they said it.

This is the essence of politics and diplomacy.

Be that as it may, someone has been declaiming against tobacco ever since the 1500s, when Sir Walter Raleigh sailed from England to the New World for a smoke and brought back tobacco. Lest we forget, he also brought coffee, which has also been alternately damned and deified by popes and proletarians.

Nicotine and caffeine seem to have been hazardous to the roving old bon vivant's health, for Raleigh was eventually beheaded. But it was all politics. And here, I believe, is a great truth about the unending debate and denunciation surrounding tobacco in Sacramento and Washington. It's all politics.

In these stormy times, denouncing tobacco is as good as kissing ugly babies or endorsing the flag, motherhood and apple pie.

Now, before I rhapsodize further on the elegant and well-crafted tobacco smoking pipe, I don't advocate tender-throated 10-year-olds playing Marlboro Man or virginal Virginia Slims samplers huffing and puffing in the junior high girls' bathroom. We're all sensible adults here.

When State Health Director S. Kimberly Belshe and other tobacco foes recently announced the cigar marketing crackdown, they cited studies claiming a 300 percent increase in stogie smoking by men 19 to 24. Fully a third of males 16 and 17 had at least tried cigars. Well, boys will be boys.

Back in the 1950s, among my circle, it wasn't a real Saturday night if Snakenavel McCune and I didn't smoke at least one dime Hav-A-Tampa. Black Jack McKeen, on the other hand, preferred those tar-colored Italian cigars that smell like a successful arson job at a rug factory. Hey, it was a guy thing. And guess what? It still is.

Only 1.1 percent of women who admit smoking cigars claim they enjoy them, according to the state health director. This is up from a paltry 0.2 percent of women who claimed they enjoyed smoking cigars a few years ago. Who cares, if they aren't being forced to light up their Cohibas or Macanudos at gunpoint? We're talking about personal choices here.

I'll never give up and put away my modest collection of smoking pipes, aesthetic things of beauty unto themselves with their graceful curves, luscious wood grains and sensuously carved bowls. One day perhaps I can afford a matched set of five, carved by the Italian master craftsman himself, Aldo Valani. A decade ago they cost $10,000 for the set. They're $2,000 apiece for just one, if you're a no-class penny-pincher.

A good quality pipe, relatively inexpensive at $35 to $100, will last a smoker decades if properly cared for. My favorite tobacco is $6.39 for four ounces. You can get hit double that or more at a chain store in a fancy mall.

Don't misunderstand. I do not inhale the sweet, aromatic smoke but merely savor it and let it go. Some contend that you run the risk of oral cancers even if you don't inhale. Probably true, but only if you smoke those $7.95 blowtorch specials from the drugstore, use cheap, prepackaged and chemically treated tobacco, or keep a pipe in your mouth 18 hours a day, lighted or not.

On the other hand, here is some tantalizing data from the historic Surgeon General's Report on Tobacco, Paragraph 1103, Page 112. Male pipe smokers of mature middle-age who don't inhale live longer in substantial numbers than their nonsmoking counterparts. The study group included guys who smoked up to 10 pipefuls a day for 30 years.

Nonsmokers in the same age bracket, by comparison, dropped like spent matches. And they didn't likely overdose on herbal tea, low-fat yogurt and triathlons. One can surmise they were impatient, restless, easily bored, shallow as a Death Valley birdbath in September and probably intolerant of others' differences.

Pipe smokers who do inhale what can be strong smoke run about the same health risks as cigarette smokers, but getting out of bed in the morning can be dangerous. Life is full of choices.

I could go on and on about this hobby/habit that provides physical pleasure, comfort in solitude and esthetic enjoyment, but I have an important appointment.

It's with my favorite pipe and the park bench across the street overlooking majestic Los Angeles Harbor, with its romantic view of towering steel ships and soaring seabirds.