The rights of Joe Camel and the Marlboro man.

Joe Camel banned from Rolling Stone magazine? The Marlboro Man banished from billboards everywhere? The end of Winston Cup racing and Vantage golf tournaments? Never another Virginia Slims tennis match or musical performance?

Yes, if President Clinton and the Food and Drug Administration have their way. With the noble aim of cutting teenage smoking, they have proposed sweeping restrictions on advertising and images that "portray tobacco use as fun, independent, sexy, and glamorous."

These sweeping proposals do have some opponents besides the tobacco industry - but not many. Nobody likes to be that unpopular, especially in their own circles. I know I don't. But as an anti-censorship activist, I just can't get around the free-speech limitations implicit in these proposals. Sometimes I almost wish I could, for I truly detest tobacco products. But giving the government the power to enforce these restrictions is simply too dangerous to the First Amendment.

President Clinton's strategy for imposing restrictions on commercial speech began when the FDA declared nicotine an addictive drug - which it certainly is. But it's a perfectly legal addictive drug, just like alcohol. Putting aside for the moment the substantial issue of whether the state should make the use of certain substances for individual consumption a punishable crime in the first place, these particular proposals should be carefully examined.

The Clinton/FDA legislation includes banning tobacco billboards within 1,000 feet of any school or playground and allowing only black-and-white ads without pictures in materials read by two million teens or with more than a 15 percent youth readership. The sale or display by any store of caps, gym bags, and T-shirts with cigarette-brand logos would be a criminal offense. Brand-name sponsorship of sporting or entertainment events would be prohibited. Cigarette machines would be banned from grocery stores, restaurants, and all other places where a teen might wander.

Last, but not least, the six tobacco companies whose brands teens use most would be ordered to help the FDA create televised health warnings and other educational materials at a cost to the industry of millions of dollars.

When did it become appropriate for the president or any federal agency to dictate which legal products can be advertised, where, when, and in what manner? In a capitalist, free-enterprise society (whether or not we endorse such a system), should we give the state the comprehensive power to limit free speech by censoring the contents of ads for certain legal products? Should the government be doing this to a legitimate industry (whether or not we think it should be a legitimate industry notwithstanding) that produces and sells a legal product grown with the help of government subsidies? And can that industry be forced by the state to pay for advertising that disparages its own products?

Despite my attempts to get around it, there's something very wrong about all this. It really sticks in my throat. As much as I'd love to see the tobacco companies go out of business altogether, these proposals reek of unfairness. Worse yet, they would impose government censorship on a massive scale. "There are serious constitutional problems with the majority of the new regulations," says First Amendment expert Martin Redish, professor of law at Northwestern University. That's putting it mildly.

Most of the proposed regulations are being challenged in a pair of federal lawsuits filed in North Carolina by the tobacco and advertising industries. (The total absence of any free-speech organizations from this conflict is glaring.) U.S. District Judge William Osteen has ordered briefs discussing the FDA's authority to issue such regulations and whether or not they would violate the First Amendment. The first scheduled court date is February 10, 1997.

While it is true that the courts have never interpreted the First Amendment as giving absolute protection to all speech and have given governments more leeway to regulate advertising than other types of expression, existing case law leaves no doubt that advertising is entitled to most free-speech protections.

In a 1980 ruling, the Supreme Court said that commercial speech that is truthful, not misleading, and concerns a legal activity may be somewhat limited only if the government can establish a specific interest in doing so, if the limitation directly advances that interest, and if the limitation is the least restrictive means to serve that interest.

In May 1996, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Rhode Island and other states cannot prohibit ads which list or refer to liquor prices, thus adding significantly to the protection historically afforded to commercial speech. Although the case (44 Liquormart v. Rhode Island) focused solely on liquor-price advertising, legal scholars believe it will also apply to government efforts to regulate other potentially harmful products and activities.

It is interesting that in the Liquormart case, the government argued that state control over alcohol is unique because the Twenty-first Amendment, which ended Prohibition, gave states the power to control liquor sales or even to ban them completely. The High Court disagreed. "Such an advertising ban is an abridgement of speech protected by the First Amendment and ... it is not shielded from constitutional scrutiny by the Twenty-first Amendment," wrote Justice John Paul Stevens in the Court ruling.

Unfortunately, this recent ruling did not prod Clinton or the FDA into rethinking their position. "Politics is what's going on here, despite painfully obvious First Amendment problems," says Cameron DeVore, another First Amendment specialist in Seattle, Washington. How sad that even the First Amendment is fair game as a sacrifice to political expediency.

I have never smoked. It's a disgusting habit, and it kills people in a very messy and painful manner. Personally, I think anyone who purposefully inflicts lung cancer upon themselves is bent on self-destruction. However, I don't believe that regulating the disgusting or harmful use of legal products by its citizens is a proper role for the state.

Underlying the impulse to control certain personal choices "for our own good" is another equally strong (or stronger) motivation: these are "sinful" products and behaviors that offend the moral sensibilities of the regulators. Certain things are "vices" which lead to sinful temptation and, as such, are an exception to commercial free-speech protections. But government has no business forcing such moralism upon its citizens.

Accordingly, the Liquormart decision precludes the argument that tobacco ads can be regulated for "promoting vice." So the Clinton administration is trying to create a "kid" exception to free speech. If it's illegal to sell cigarettes to minors, it reasons, it must be all right to suppress tobacco ads that underage potential customers may see.

The problem with this rationale is the same one we encounter when we attempt to keep certain reading and viewing materials away from children: adults live in the same space children do. In previous decisions, the Supreme Court has made it clear that government cannot create a situation that renders what's available in our society to the level of what is suitable for children.

Clinton and the FDA also insist that their proposed regulations meet the Supreme Court's standard of "substantial government interest to protect children." But they have to prove this assertion - and I don't think they can.

"Is the use of a cartoon character in an ad proof that you're `targeting children'?" asks Jeff Perlman of the American Advertising Federation. "If so, what about the Pink Panther selling insulation or Snoopy promoting insurance? That argument is totally spurious."

In addition to all the aforementioned negative reasons why the state should not have the power to ban commercial speech, unfettered advertising offers customers some positive and valuable services. For starters, accurate ads convey vital information. In our modern consumer society, one cannot avoid making choices among a myriad of available products, from food to telephone services. These choices cannot be made in an information vacuum. As citizens in a democratic society, we have the right to be fully informed. After we have gathered the available information, we must be free to evaluate it and make decisions for ourselves. So the right to advertise products provides protections for consumers as well as for retailers and corporations.

Then there's the fact that, without advertising, competition would be limited and would result in higher retail prices. (It is for this reason that Ralph Nader is a strong advocate of free commercial speech.)

And, of course, the whole thing smacks of government intrusion. Surely preventing the producers and distributors of legal products from telling the public that their products exist is at least patently unfair and at worst downright tyrannical. The fundamental unfairness of the situation can be illuminated by asking a few specific questions.

What about dairy companies and the manufacturers of other high-cholesterol foods? There's certainly no question that cholesterol clogs arteries and leads directly to heart attacks and death. What about the producers of red meat? What about all that sugar? For those who believe that butter, red meat, sugar, and many other foods aren't as addictive as tobacco, I suggest they attend a few Overeaters Anonymous meetings, which is guaranteed to dispel such false notions about food addiction. Yet no one would suggest that the state ban grocery-store ads for these products.

What about sun-tanning products - or lying in the sun at all, for that matter? There's no doubt that this harmful activity directly causes cancer. Yet no one would suggest that we ban suntan-parlor advertising.

Many such other examples could be cited. In the end, it all boils down to the fact that commercial speech is no exception to the well-worn adage heard so many times from anti-censorship activists like myself: the proper response to commercial speech we don't like is still more speech. In the case of tobacco, it's already been proven that this method works. The unprecedented success of the American Cancer Society's anti-smoking ads - and the effectiveness of many other educational projects originated in the 1960s - tells us what we should be doing if we really want to reduce the number of new smokers. This "more speech" technique was so successful that the tobacco companies realized their television ads were resulting in ill will instead of creating customers and voluntarily pulled them off the air.

"Rather than trying to gag big tobacco, the [Clinton] administration should just talk back," says Kathleen Sullivan, professor of law at Stanford University. We all can help this educational process along by doing the same thing on an individual level.

I have always believed that understanding the heart of the First Amendment is a necessity for anyone who wants to be an advocate of free speech. You must be willing to defend the speech you hate the most just as vigorously as you defend the speech you cherish.

Sometimes it really hurts to do this. And sometimes it upsets valued friends and colleagues. But it comes with the territory.

Barbara Dority is president of Humanists of Washington, executive director of the Washington Coalition Against Censorship, and cochair of the Northwest Feminist Anti-Censorship Taskforce.