SEN. JOEL LOURIE pulled me aside at the State House Thursday to explain why he had blocked final passage of his bill to make it illegal for kids to smoke.

It seems that the closer the bill got to the governor’s desk (it was as little as one step away on Tuesday when he halted its progress), the more concerned he became about all the questions being raised by defense attorneys: Should kids be prosecuted in magistrate’s court, where the whole world would see their misdeeds and the conviction would be on their records for life unless they took the special steps to get the conviction expunged? Or in family court, where it would be confidential but those with previous run-ins with the law just might be hauled in front of a judge who had told them if they ever showed up in her court again, she was sending them to DJJ?

He was even more worried about the cautions being raised by everybody from prosecutors and the sheriff to magistrates and public health advocates: Kids don’t think like adults. Simply telling them something is illegal isn’t going to change their behavior. To change behavior, you have to change the way they think, and that takes an education campaign.

Combined, those concerns and questions convinced Mr. Lourie that he needed to spend the summer and fall studying what kind of punishments and educational campaigns other states had used, and what kind of results they had seen.

Then suddenly he was talking about the seat belt law and the mounds of evidence, from across the country, that allowing police to enforce the seat belt law increases seat belt use and saves lives. He was recalling a meeting from a year and a half ago, when he brought reams of data I had long before memorized to back up his points about a so-called primary enforcement law.

“My point was the facts support our case, and we just need to do a real good job of educating the public and the General Assembly,” he recalled. “It was very clear that the facts were undeniable, indisputable. I don’t think we’ve done enough of that work on the smoking bill, and I’m not ready to pass a bill that could bring more children and families into the criminal justice system until I do more research.”

As we spoke, the bill finally allowing police to enforce South Carolina’s 16-year-old seat belt law was on its way to Gov. Mark Sanford, who has until midnight to decide its future.

Mr. Sanford has been listening to supporters, but he says the bill isn’t good enough. He doesn’t necessarily oppose primary enforcement, his spokesman said last week. But the governor says that if the government is going to intrude on what he calls people’s freedom to make stupid decisions, it needs to make sure it’s doing so in as effective a way as possible.

I agree.

He wants to apply market forces.

So do I.

I would love to charge people more than $25 for not buckling up. I think it’s a grand idea to let insurance companies raise your rates if you’re injured while not buckled up, just as they raise your rates when the wreck is your fault. I think it’s only fair that a jury should be able to take into account the fact that the person suing me over a wreck might have escaped uninjured had she been wearing a seat belt. I think it’s ridiculous that police still wouldn’t be able to hand out seat belt tickets at roadblocks if the bill becomes law.

But I’ll take what I can get. And thanks to legislators who look at government and “freedom” the way Mr. Sanford does, I can’t get higher fines or the freedom for insurance companies to raise rates or jurors to take into account the fact that people break the law and contribute to their own injuries.

And here’s where Mr. Sanford’s argument about market forces and getting the most effective law possible fail: There is no evidence that any of those changes that he and I both want would make a bit of difference.

There is no correlation between how big the fines are and how likely people are to wear a seat belt. There are no studies that show civil liability changes seat belt behavior. I suspect it could, but that’s simply my gut feeling; I can’t prove it any more than Mr. Sanford can.

On the other hand, I can give you ample proof of the simple fact that he pretends does not exist: When you allow police to enforce the seat belt law, usage increases by 10 to 15 percentage points. Numerous studies in the states with primary enforcement laws have documented that. And since numerous other studies have documented that wearing a seat belt improves your chance of surviving a crash by about 50 percent, there is absolutely no question that the bill on Mr. Sanford’s desk will save lives.

The way Mr. Lourie sees it, it’s an open-and-shut case, wrapped up nicely in an 86-page booklet that he and other highway safety advocates brought with them when they started their latest seat belt push back in early 2003.

If the facts weren’t so clear, he told me, he wouldn’t be pushing so hard.

Those facts are clear enough to have convinced several libertarian-leaning Republicans: Republicans favored the seat belt law by 41-21 in the House and 15-11 in the Senate.

We just need the one in the governor’s office to come aboard.

Ms. Scoppe can be reached at cscoppe@thestate.com or at (803) 771-8571.