PUFF YOUR WAY INTO THE GOLD RUSH.

Byline: Ted Rall 

CAN'T afford to send your kids to an Ivy League college? Want to trade up to leather seats in an SUV so big it can crush 18-wheelers? Wouldn't you love a second home - in Bali? Forget working late or patenting your DNA; all you have to do is start smoking.

True, you'll lose all your friends. You'll smell homeless. And nicotine withdrawal will turn both movies and air travel into pure torture. But stay focused. If you can get past the brown teeth, rude remarks and splitting headaches, you'll eventually develop some form of cancer. Whether those rapidly multiplying mutations are coursing through your lungs or your lips, cancer cells mean big money!

Just ask Leslie Whiteley. At the young age of 40, she's already cashed in to the tune of $20 million - $10 million from Philip Morris and another $10 million from R.J. Reynolds - from a California court. And that's on top of $1.7 million in compensatory damages! Even after paying her attorneys, that's a rockin' haul.

Of course, people have known that smoking kills almost as long as it's been around. Louis XIV banned the importation of tobacco into France, noting in court that it caused ``tumors of the lung.'' But Americans who began puffing before 1969, when cigarettes began carrying the surgeon general's warning, used to be the only cancer victims who'd successfully sued big tobacco. Anyone who started smoking later, said the courts, was considered duly warned of the risks and thus responsible for any icky diseases that might eat out their insides.

Thanks to Leslie, all that has changed. As her lawyer Robert Brown successfully argued, ``There's a big difference between 'They're not good for you' and 'You've got a 50 percent chance of dying from any of several very serious diseases.' ''

Naturally, suing cigarette manufacturers using the argument that your only source of information about smoking comes from the container in which they're sold requires some finagling. Any time someone on TV mentions the 450,000 Americans who die each year from smoking-related illnesses, rush out of the room and sing show tunes as loudly as your clogged-up lungs will allow so that you don't hear this dangerously exculpatory information. If a colleague happens to mention that a friend or relative is ill, quickly place your hands over your ears and yell ``la la la la la la I can't hear you'' until he goes away. Otherwise you might inadvertently be infected with anecdotal, indemnifying evidence of tobacco-related ailments. What about those mornings when you feel like the Empire State Building is parked on your chest? Whatever you do, don't call your doctor. Physicians, sadly unaware of legal basics, might advise you to quit - in which case your case would be queered forever.

The tobacco gold rush won't last forever. Someday some politician will close a quirky legislative loophole that permits multimillion-dollar legal judgments against an industry that produces a perfectly legal product - simply for producing that perfectly legal product. Some namby-pamby, buttinsky do-gooder with nothing better to do will whip the public into a press-fueled hysteria with poisonous rhetoric about the health risks associated with smoking. On that sad day, tobacco will be banned altogether.

Alternatively, some suck-up, right-wing corporate lackey will propose a law indemnifying big tobacco from lawsuits. And if the common-sense status quo prevails, even the hundreds of millions of new smokers in Asia won't be able to keep these corporations in business.

That's why it's so important to start smoking now, and absolutely imperative to document cancer symptoms right away. You can accelerate the process by sucking on car exhaust, walking to work on the freeway and snorting photocopier fumes - as long as you're smoking at least a pack a day, no one'll ever catch on.

So what's Leslie Whiteley, who got hip to the wonders of burning processed leaves wrapped in paper at age 13, going to do next? Fresh from brain surgery two weeks ago, she was described by her lawyer Madelyn Chaber as ``thrilled obviously, but it's a mixed joy. She's happy her children are going to be taken care of, but she's not going to be around for their lives.'' As for the kids, let the shopping spree begin!

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Photo: (color) no caption (cigarettes)

John McCoy/Staff Photographer