Need a Place to Puff? Hint: Grab Your Passport

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But where there's a profit to be made, there's a way. In Europe, Asia and South America, cigarette manufacturers get around advertising restrictions by sponsoring cultural and sporting events that keep their product names in the public eye. In Hungary manufacturers have simply calculated that the $100 fine for running print ads is an endurable slap on the wrist when compared with the sales stimulated by such advertising. Ditto for many French restaurateurs, who would rather risk an unlikely complaint and the attendant $1,035 fine than shell out more than $4,000 to install required smoke-ventilation devices. To date, only one proprietor -- Simone Puigcercos, who owns the Auberge Bavaroise in Bordeaux -- has been nabbed for turning away a client who demanded to be seated in a nonsmoking section. "It's my restaurant, after all, and I can do as I like," says Puigcercos, who awaits a court hearing. Other owners are even more brazen. Paris' chic Le Pichet has posted a sign: RESTAURANT IS RESERVED FOR SMOKERS. NONSMOKERS ACCEPTED.

Governments that rely on income generated by the cigarette industry are particularly disinclined to crack down. In Indonesia, where a breathless 64% of the adult population smokes, officials counter health lobbyists' appeals for bans with harsh numbers: an antismoking campaign could threaten 20 million jobs. At a time when India is slashing levies on many items as part of a general economic liberalization, New Delhi is increasingly dependent on cigarette excise taxes. Similarly, while China officially frowns on smoking, little is being done to curb an industry that generated $5.26 billion in profits in 1992. Of that, $4.8 billion went to the state in taxes.

Some governments fear that escalating health costs will outpace such profits. But they must do battle with U.S. cigarette manufacturers, who have shifted their sights abroad to make up for lost ground back home. American companies have trained a particularly keen eye on Russia and Eastern Europe, snapping up tobacco-production plants in Hungary and the Czech Republic and hungrily coveting the six state factories in Poland. In the decade since Japan reluctantly opened its market to foreign cigarette brands, three U.S. companies have captured 17.5% of the market. Bungaku Watanabe, who heads the country's 100,000-strong antismoking lobby, calls U.S. tobacco exports to Asia "another Opium War."

While the Opium War lasted only three years in the 19th century, the Smoking War is likely to continue for decades. Seductive profits, entrenched habits and widespread illiteracy, which militates against public education, all pose obstacles. Human frailty is also no small hurdle. China's advertising ban can hardly compete with old photographs of Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping blithely puffing away. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at least practices what he preaches. In February the Israeli parliament passed legislation that would have banned smoking in the workplace. But Rabin, who chain-smokes his way through weekly Cabinet meetings, did not want to be a hypocrite. He refused to sign it.