A reasonable tax on snuff and "spit" tobacco to raise needed revenue to expand health insurance for the uninsured, offset its harms and to reduce usage, especially among children, should be a no brainer. Especially when every other state in the union does it except Pennsylvania.

But that's when the big, out-of-state producers and lobbyists for these toxic products, which cause oral cancers and nicotine addictions in youth, step in to make it complicated.

The manufacturers of what is too benignly called "smokeless" tobacco have been reading the handwriting on the walls of the Capitol ever since Gov. Ed Rendell and a bevy of legislators have sought a tax on "other tobacco products." By only taxing cigarettes, the state favors these untaxed tobacco products, creating an enticing market condition for price conscious users like children.

The tax-free ride for less-expensive smokeless products thus results in Pennsylvania having double the percentage of male youth using "smokeless" than the comparable Ohio, which does tax smokeless. This is the lucrative industry that invented cherry, vanilla and other candy-flavored moist snuff as "starter" products to snag the young in a lifelong addiction to nicotine. Three-quarters of high school senior users have started in the ninth grade, and the newer smokeless, spitless moist snuff can actually be consumed in schools unknown to the teacher.

There has been what The Richmond Times-Dispatch has called a "renaissance" in smokeless sales, especially among youth. Moist snuff revenues have exceeded $3 billion yearly.

Faced with an inevitable tax here, the industry led by its largest producer, U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Co., producing Skoal and Copenhagen, has turned to behind-the-scenes Harrisburg lobbying to obtain a more favorable tax by weight of the product rather than a tax as a percentage of wholesale price (ad valorem tax), which the great majority of states have adopted.

The ad valorem tax keeps up with inflation and producer price increases, and addresses the coming expansion of a new generation of super low weight but potent products. A tax by weight insures high profits and reduced state revenues from sales of these low-weight products like UST's Skoal Dry, RJR's Camel Snus, and others that represent the smokeless wave of the future.

A new Pennsylvania tax should not only be aimed at maximizing state revenues but, more importantly, reducing use by children enticed by targeted marketing and the myth that "smokeless" equals harmless. The premium brands most attractive to youth, would pay lower taxes under the tax by weight approach.

As for fairly taxing those bargain basement price competitors of the UST big producers, the answer is to combine a minimum tax to cover them, along with the ad valorem tax. And to further equal the lethal playing field of these companies, Pennsylvania should subject those companies other than UST that never signed the Smokeless Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement to Non-Participating Manufacturer fees.

Reducing oral cancers in children and preventing lifelong addictions to nicotine along with maximizing revenue for expanded health insurance must trump the lobbying of the big, out of state smokeless producers.

JONATHAN M. STEIN is general counsel at Community Legal Services Inc., Philadelphia.