Volunteer Vice Squad

The executives in the television commercial are grim. "We need more smokers!" growls the tough-talking boss of a tobacco firm. "Every day 2,000 Americans stop smoking. And another 1,100 also quit. Actually, technically, they die. That means that this business needs 3,000 fresh new volunteers every day. So forget about all of that cancer, heart disease, emphysema, stroke stuff! Gentlemen, we're not in this business for our health!" And with that, the businessmen erupt in gales of sinister laughter.

Shown on TV stations throughout California starting last week, the devastatingly direct commercial was the opening salvo in the state's new $28.6 million advertising war against smoking. The California blitz is designed to counter the slick marketing efforts of tobacco firms with equally sophisticated TV, radio and newspaper ads. The goal: to persuade 5 million of the state's 7 million smokers to kick the habit by the end of the decade. Most ironic of all is that the campaign will be financed by smokers through a new 25 cents-a-pack cigarette tax. Says Thomas Lauria, a spokesman for the Tobacco Institute: "Now smokers are paying for their own harassment."

The California offensive opens another chapter in the growing clamor of public opposition to the marketing of alcohol as well as tobacco. The emotional ground swell against the advertising of vices is fueled by a powerful combination of health consciousness, consumer activism and community pride. In New York City, Chicago and Dallas local residents have been whitewashing inner-city billboards to obliterate the images of such products as cigarettes and Cognac.

Meanwhile, parents and health experts have blasted the sponsorship of sports events by tobacco and brewing companies. Louis Sullivan, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has attacked cigarette sponsorship of such athletic events as Virginia Slims tennis. In its new contract with CBS, the National Collegiate Athletic Association reduced alcohol advertising during its postseason games from 90 seconds to 60 seconds an hour. Said an N.C.A.A. spokesman: "We had gotten widespread feedback from parents, school administrators and the general public that alcohol was the No. 1 problem."

The outcry has prompted a growing sentiment in Congress to curb the advertising of legal vices. Legislators are working on 72 separate bills concerning tobacco products, while another flurry of proposals would impose new restrictions on beer, wine and spirits. Since last November federal law has required warning labels on all containers of alcoholic beverages sold in the U.S. Expanding on that approach, legislation sponsored by Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee and Representative Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts would require spoken health warnings in all TV and radio ads for beer and wine, including toll-free telephone numbers that would provide callers with information on how to cope with alcoholism. The legislation has garnered broad bipartisan support, in part because of studies showing that alcohol abuse costs the U.S. an estimated $136 billion every year. The annual health cost of smoking is about $52 billion.