The deal state attorneys general crafted with Big Tobacco this summer was a good start, but the plan President Clinton unveiled last week is better. Better because it’s tougher.

The $368 billion settlement the attorneys general worked out had from the start a slightly suspect aroma — its primary focus was on ending lawsuits rather than reducing teen smoking, the tobacco industry got to keep too many of its secrets, it hampered the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to regulate nicotine, it prohibited courts from awarding punitive damages and from punishing past misconduct, the payments were spread out over such a long time, 25 years, that the only real impact would have been slightly higher cigarette prices.

Then there’s the $50 billion break the industry and its friends in Congress weaseled into the recent tax bill, proof enough that good faith was not part of the bargaining process. Why Big Tobacco settled so quickly became increasingly apparent as the deal was scrutinized.

The president’s proposal packs a lot more punch. Penalties for missing goals of reducing teen smoking are stiffer. The industry’s veil of secrecy is somewhat lifted and its liability shield lowered. The FDA will face no special hurdles. And the $50 billion giveaway goes in the dumper.

There’s one more component that many may find distasteful but that is necessary — provisions to help tobacco farmers break their own nasty habit.

It would be too easy to tell the nation’s 124,000 growers to pound sand, to say they are the problem and putting them out of business is the solution.

But it’s not that simple. About two-thirds of the nation’s tobacco is grown in North Carolina and Kentucky by small farmers just getting by. A problem that took centuries to develop should not be solved by devastating hundreds of rural communities overnight. Tobacco is a high-yield, relatively failure-proof product but a switch to soybeans or another worthwhile crop may be feasible if the farmers get the assistance they need.

Mississippi Attorney General Michael Moore, lead negotiator of the original deal, likes where the president is heading, but is skeptical about Congress’s willingness to get there anytime soon, given its long history of playing footsie with Big Tobacco.

Moore’s skepticism is justified. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, whose fingerprints were all over the $50 billion tax break, called Clinton’s proposal “late and paltry.” Oklahoma Sen. Don Nickles, the GOP’s true blue Marlboro man, says there’s no rush to consider the plan. Despite the fact that more than 250,000 kids started smoking since the original deal was struck three months ago, Nickles says there’s nothing urgent here. Too little, too late or too much, too soon. Take your pick.

As leading Republican senators went into their stonewalling mode, their counterparts in the House surely discussed the ramifications of the president’s plan on their way to a fund-raiser in New York City Wednesday night. And just how did Messrs. Gingrich, Armey, DeLay, et al. get to the Big Apple, you ask? On corporate jets provided by U.S. Tobacco Co. The only way to fly.

Despite its tendancy toward business as usual, there are signs Congress is inclined get tough on tobacco. Inone of its first acts after August recess, the Senate overwhelmingly backed an amendment, co-sponsored by Maine’s Sen. Susdan Collins, that excised the $50 billion shenanigan from the tax bill. Last week, at the president’s urging, the House affirmed its support by voice vote for the same amendment.

The best part of the president’s plan, though, is that it puts Big Tobacco in its place — not as an equal partner in negotiations but as an industry with a substantial impact upon public health that should be controlled as are other such industries and that should pay for that impact.

At least that’s what Patrick Reynolds says: “Congress doesn’t need to negotiate with the tobacco industry in order to pass these regulations. Congress doesn’t need the tobacco industry’s permission to regulate it.” Reynolds, head of the Foundation for a Smokefree America, by the way, is the grandson of R.J. Reynolds.