(FORTUNE Magazine) – You probably thought the New Puritanism ended with the defeat of the tobacco bill. Think again. Unfazed by the failure of the campaign against Big Tobacco, reformers are bearing down on a new target: Big Booze. "The next sin is licensed beverages," warns David Rehr, the savvy chief lobbyist for the National Beer Wholesalers Association. "The most worrisome thing for us is that the tobacco settlement would have given millions to trial lawyers. Who do you think they're going after next?"

In truth, the crusade has already begun, and this is its mantra: Raise beer taxes. Eliminate youth-oriented alcohol advertising. Declare war against underage drinking. Rep. Joseph Kennedy of Massachusetts is sponsoring five anti-alcohol measures, including a ban on hard-liquor advertising on electronic media and the elimination of the tax deduction booze companies take for promotion and advertising. Kennedy critics may snicker, but his crusade is sure to be taken up by a number of lawmakers of both parties after he retires in January. "The anti-alcohol lobby is strong," says Bobby Koch, senior vice president of the Wine Institute, "and they're always coming after us."

The liquor lobby has taken the offensive to blunt these threats. Its agents in Washington are throwing around a lot of money, offering campaign advice, and reminding lawmakers that 100 million Americans like a pop now and then. But mostly they are trying to put some distance between themselves and the tobacco industry, which colluded in secret and ran away from suggestions that its product was dangerous. A story detailing the blunders of the tobacco industry in the trade publication Beverage Industry this summer carries the headline LESSONS TO LEARN FROM.

"We're very different from tobacco," says Fred Meister, who heads the Distilled Spirits Council. "We have always recognized that our products can be abused, and we've always had codes of marketing and advertising." True enough. But like tobacco, the liquor industry is vulnerable to charges that it gears its appeals to young people, using animated characters--like the Budweiser frogs--that aren't substantially different from Joe Camel. "We spend billions fighting a war on drugs, but our kids will see tens of thousands of ads suggesting that if they want to get the girl or the guy or get to the top of the mountain, they ought to suck down some brew," says Kennedy, who was energized to take on the liquor industry after seeing a beer ad while watching Saturday morning television with his sons.

But this is not a single-front war. The Center for Science in the Public Interest is pressing the Federal Communications Commission to begin an inquiry on liquor advertising in the broadcast media. Activists are working with an unlikely ally, GOP Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, whose eldest child was killed by a drunk driver, to expand government warning messages on alcoholic-beverage containers. Another battle will be over what to include in the next federal dietary guidelines. The industry cites studies suggesting that liquor is something of a health food--that beer can boost the body's immune system and wine can cut the risk of heart disease. "We're going to fight any effort to say [alcohol] consumption is good for your health," says George Hacker, director of the alcohol-policies project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

At the heart of this skirmish, as at the heart of the tobacco war, is a classic American debate about freedom and responsibility, about personal choice and government regulation. If another anti-sin crusade takes off, warns the distillers' Meister, "all the other industries from pork to automobiles" should watch out. Come to think of it, with all those moralists running around Iowa while running for president, the fried pork tenderloin sandwich, a symphony of calories and cholesterol, could be in grave danger.

DAVID SHRIBMAN is Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political reporter.