Congress is beginning to get serious about reducing smoking among children, and, boy, is Big Tobacco fuming. The latest proposals in the Senate show how easily the industry would have gotten off with an earlier proposal from 40 states. Now Congress needs to build support for real reform of this serious health threat to children.

Big Tobacco has responded with its typical bluster. Pass real legislation, its lead lawyer threatened Congress, and the industry won’t help steer advertising away from kids. The industry feels cheated because it almost had passed the legislation devised by the state attorneys general, which limited Tobacco’s liability without costing it much in payments to cover Medicare costs.

Sen. John McCain this week introduced the proposal to the Senate Commerce Committee that has the industry so angry. The bill is a great start on improving the earlier flawed proposal. The committee, including Sen. Olympia Snowe, promptly backed the plan, 19-1, Wednesday night. The proposal is, however, opposed by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and former Food and Drug Administration Chief David Kessler, whose support is crucial to convincing the public that Congress has passed something of substance. They say the senator’s bill doesn’t go far enough. They have this luxury because another bill, sponsored by Sens. John Chaffee, Tom Harkin and Bob Graham and called the KIDS Act, is tougher yet.

The significant differences betwen the McCain and Chaffee bills are these: McCain caps annual civil damages at $6.5 billion; Kids caps them at $8 billion. McCain would raise the price of cigarettes by $1.10 over five years; KIDS would increase it by $1.50 over two years. Look-back penalties in McCain are capped at $3.5 billion for the entire industry if any of its members fail to reduce teen smoking by specific amounts; KIDS caps the penalty at $10 billion per tobacco corporation. And KIDS goes further to ensure that states, which started this settlement based in part on their Medicaid costs from smokers, get more of the money and have more flexibility to spend it on health costs.

The last provision brought the KIDS Act support from the nation’s governors, including Angus King.

Given the amount of money Big Tobacco spends on Congress each year to guarantee that any bills of substance get snuffed out quickly, these tougher provisions are sure to face enthusiastic opposition. By passing the McCain proposal, however, Commerce sends the debate to the floor of the Senate, where amendments from the KIDS Act can be considered. Maine’s Sens. Snowe and Susan Collins can be important advocates there for the tougher reforms.

One thing everyone has learned about the tobacco industry in the last couple of years is that it will not stop its practice of hooking children unless it is absolutely forced to. That means seriously increasing the price of cigarettes to put them out of reach of children’s wallets and stiff fines if the industry fails to end its marketing program for young customers.

The KIDS Act moves cigarettes out of children’s economic reach, tells the industry to keep away from teen-agers and gives states the options they need to carry out health programs. Adding its provisions to the current legislation is what real reform is all about.