A number of countries around the world have enacted various laws to restrain cigarette advertising, without impressive results. In most cases, smoking declined somewhat, but the restrictions certainly did not achieve the anti-tobacco crusaders' goal of eliminating smoking.

• Since Norway banned all tobacco advertising two decades ago, the proportion of smokers has declined from 41 percent to 34 percent, with the decline more or less leveling off after the first several years without ads.

• Since a partial ban came into effect in Finland in 1978, the proportion of male smokers there has declined from 35 percent to 27 per as of last year -- but the percentage of women who smoke has remained level at 18 percent and teenage smoking has increased from under 22 percent to 24 percent.

• In New Zealand, 27 percent of adults smoke, a figure that hasn't changed at all since an advertising ban was enacted in 1990.

• Thirty-one percent of Canadians smoked regularly in 1994, five years after a ban was adopted there, compared with 30 percent in 1990.

Critics of government social activism say such figures demonstrate that governments often have little clout when they attempt to re-engineer human behavior.

Source: Ernest Beck, "Ad Bans Abroad Haven't Snuffed Out Smoking," Wall Street Journal, June 12, 1997.