Only now, going on two years since all 50 states settled suits against the tobacco industry, is the real nature of the scheme becoming clear to a few eccentrics who have bothered to pay attention.

In short, state governments and their private attorneys didn't beat the tobacco companies. They joined them in an efficient new strategy to exploit smokers.

In exchange for a handsome cut of the loot, and for political glory (currently being cashed in locally by U.S. Senate candidate Michael Ciresi), the states and their lawyers agreed to help the big tobacco firms fix prices at new high levels, block competition and fight smokers' collective attempts to win compensation of their own.

Consider some new evidence:

Last week, in the closing hours of the legislative session, Minnesota lawmakers passed a law to prevent Minnesota smokers from buying cheaper cigarettes, a measure enthusiastically supported by the tobacco industry.

The ``copycat'' or ``gray market'' smokes in question are American-brand cigarettes manufactured overseas under licensing agreements. They can now be sold in America at lower prices than their domestically made counterparts. That's because the foreign firms don't have to boost prices to fund huge settlement payments to the states.

But this kind of competition, while good for smokers, cuts into Minnesota state government's settlement booty. All settlement payments to the states are reduced, under terms of the agreements, if sales of domestic cigarettes decline.

So Minnesota lawmakers have acted to safeguard government's power to fleece addicted smokers. The new law they passed imposes a ``minimum price'' on copycat cigarettes.

According to George Hoyum, director of the special taxes division at the Minnesota Revenue Department, the law means ``imported [copycat] cigarettes will disappear.''

Hoyum also says the department has ``some concerns'' about the constitutionality of the new law. He says tobacco is the only product on which state government controls prices today, and that its minimum prices (originally enacted decades ago to ensure convenient availability of cigarettes through small retailers!) were struck down as unconstitutional in the 1960s, after which the law was modified to pass constitutional muster.

In another unusual provision, the new law excuses the Revenue Department from responsibility for enforcing the minimum price. Instead, private parties (the tobacco industry) are given a special right to sue competitors who charge smokers too little.

The irony, of course, is that tobacco firms were sued, in part, for running a monopoly and acting in collusion. This legislative price fixing scheme passed by overwhelming margins in both houses.

Gov. Jesse Ventura has not yet acted on the legislation.

Meanwhile, several other states -- notably Florida earlier this month -- are passing new laws to protect tobacco companies from some of the costs of lawsuits brought by smokers, the real victims of any wrongdoing by Big Tobacco. Smokers' class-action suits, it's feared, could trigger industry bankruptcies, endangering states' share of tobacco profits.

A question worth asking is why smokers' suits threaten Big Tobacco with bankruptcy when the states' huge settlements did not? Answer: Because the state settlements were carefully designed to keep the companies in business, extracting money from addicted smokers to share with state coffers.

Finally, writing in a paper for the Cato Institute and in the Wall Street Journal, corporate lawyer Thomas C. O'Brien has recently described what he calls the ``sophisticated, white-collar crime'' that was the 1998 nationwide tobacco settlement.

In the national settlement, O'Brien says, ``the major cigarette makers bought permission to fix prices and exclude competitors.''

The settlement forces each company to pay a higher proportion of the total damages if it increases its share of the cigarette market. This makes it pointless for the major tobacco firms to compete with each other, O'Brien says. The settlement also requires each state to impose ``damages'' on any competitor who was not part of the settlement and tries to enter the market or expand its share -- rather as Minnesota's new legislation imposes minimum prices on foreign competitors.

Just as Revenue has doubts about the constitutionality of Minnesota's new law, O'Brien is convinced the national tobacco settlement is illegal and unconstitutional. Through it, states interfere with interstate commerce and international trade, and violate antitrust laws, he says. (Readers can find O'Brien's illuminating paper at www.cato.org .)

O'Brien concedes none of the co-conspirators -- the states, tobacco companies and federal officials now pursuing their own tobacco lawsuit -- seem likely to do much to enforce the law in this matter. He recommends that private actions be brought on behalf of smokers -- the victims of this historic shakedown.

It's worth a try -- hard as it is to believe, in the face of all this, that justice will ever prevail.