Just what impact does Joe Camel (and other cigarette advertising) have on young people? One African American writer recalls his encounters with the cool camel from a very young age on. He concludes that Joe Camel is not the proper target for the anti-smoking campaigners because his appeal never had much to do with the cigarette in his mouth. Charles Jones writes for YO! (Youth Outlook), a newspaper by and about young people published by Pacific News Service.

"Joe Camel? I like him," I said, speaking to my editor about the ongoing effort to erase the closest thing the tobacco industry has to the Playboy Bunny.

"Why?" was her next question.

My reply: "He's cool."

The first cigarette I ever remember seeing was a Kool, in that shiny green and white package with the gold trimming and the "O"s intertwined. From that moment on I was hooked -- on the idea of smoking.

I was far too young, and too nausea-prone, actually to spark up a "pimp stick," I decided that as soon as I was old enough -- or acquired an immunity to that disgusting smoke -- it was all gravy, baby.

Soon after, I began reading children's mysteries -- Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, etc. -- which then led me to the television sleuth, Columbo, the guru of all that is smoky and stinky. Watching Columbo, for me, was like watching Cooley High for a lot of other young African Americans (mimicking behavior and mannerism, pouring libations for lost souls).

"Y'see, that's a funny thing," Columbo heckled, scratching his head through big billows of smoke, "because I just talked to Mrs. Crabtree, and she told a different story."

As I got older, I saw the glamour and popularity smoking could confer in reruns of George and Gracie, Milton Berle, Bob Hope, and every big-hatted, purple-suited pimp/player in every big-hatted purple-suited pimp/player movie.

Sooner than later, I became old enough to smoke by American child standards. Twelve. But by that time I had watched smoking turn my mother's' beautiful smile to beige, and I was developing a counter-rebellious distaste for anything labeled "cool." The "don't smoke, look what happened to the Marlboro Man" campaign was in full gear. Besides, my smoke-induced nausea hadn't diminished.

Yep. Smoking for me was an idea that died of lung cancer -- until I met Tisha and her Newports. Before long I was hooked, a pack a day, which led me to my true destiny, cigars: just like Burns, Berle, Hope, Columbo, the pimps and Sammy D. Even the mobsters in Bugs Bunny cartoons smoked stogies, not to mention Mister "take no prisoners" himself, Wolverine of the X-men.

I don't recall anyone trying to snuff out these cigar-smoking "role models" to protect us suggestible youth. Maybe because cigars weren't central to what made these characters cool. For Joe Camel, who has more in common with Bugs or Wolvie than with the Marlboro Man -- a cigarette is practically an afterthought.

When I was a kid, my friends and I would try to find a picture within the shadows of camels on the cigarette package. Later, when the camel started lounging on beaches and playing the saxophone, the last thing we noticed was the cigarette in his mouth.

The Marlboro Man wasn't cool because he was a cowboy. He was cool because he smoked a saddlebagfull of Marlboros a day. Now he's dead.

But Joe Camel -- a cartoon, not a man -- can never die. The worst fate he can suffer is to be erased. And those who would ban him should give the young people -- in whose name they brandish the eraser -- a little more credit. If we like Joe, it may in spite of, not because of, his nasty little habit. Maybe it's the fat that he's universal, with no racial or economic identifying characteristics. Maybe it's because he knows how to have fun in a gloomy world.

Plus the fact is, Joe Camel IS Joe Cool.