Apparently believing that aggression is the best defense, Big Tobacco recently responded to complaints that it broke its agreement and still targets its advertising at teen-centered magazines by saying, in effect, “Tough.” Small wonder then that the most effective anti-smoking advertising takes on a similar edge. And good for the Maine students who created a new series of anti-smoking ads that end with the unambiguous sentiment, “Tobacco Sucks.”

R. J. Reynolds, Brown & Williamson and Lorillard are now suggesting the 1998 settlement with the states included only a guideline for advertising in magazines likely to be read by teens, such as People, Sports Illustrated and TV Guide, and that nothing prevents them from continuing to place ads there despite the number of teens who will be influenced by them. The companies were responding to a new study in The New England Journal of Medicine, which reports that the settlement appears to have had almost no effect on this type of advertising. The tobacco industry now spends $8 billion a year on advertising, up 20 percent since the settlement.

States have found two effective ways to combat the massive, sophisticated and persistent ad campaigns from the industry: raise the price of cigarettes through taxes to keep teens from starting the habit, and use teen-centered ads to persuade them to quit. Maine has taken care of the first part, raising the tax steeply on cigarettes over the last several years and seeing a commensurate drop (27 percent between 1997 and ’99) in smoking among high-school students.

Here comes the second part. Four teams – from Bath, Calais, Hampden and Old Orchard Beach -of teen-agers participating in the Partnership for a Tobacco-Free Maine wrote, acted in and videotaped their own anti-smoking ads. The ads will be shown, starting next week, on network and cable stations. The ads are intelligent, witty and clear in their message. But even before being aired, they have drawn attention for their “Tobacco Sucks” slogan, spoken in the closing seconds of each ad.

The line is certain to offend some viewers, although that sort of language is common on situation comedies shown during the so-called family hour. Bureau of Health Director Dora Mills argues that what is truly offensive is the lengths tobacco companies will go to attract new smokers, needing, naturally, to repslace the ones they’ve killed. For their part, some of the teens who made the ads swear that “sucks” is used so often among peers that it is tamer than adults might assume.

Let’s hope it hasn’t been tamed to the point that it loses all shock value. Strong words are needed to combat Maine’s top health problem and to counter the relentless advertising of the makers of this poison.