ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 1996 TAG: 9607100034
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-8 EDITION: METRO
WHEN BOB Dole said recently that not everyone who tries cigarettes becomes addicted to them, he was technically correct.
Not everyone who is shot dies of gunshot wounds, either - and some lucky people walk away from airplane crashes.
While technically correct, in other words, Dole's observation was indefensible. The generally addictive power of tobacco is indisputable.
The Republican presidential nominee-to-be has been having a hard time backtracking from the remark, and from the imprimatur he seemed to give tobacco products. However much he tries to explain what he meant - ``There is a mixed view among scientists and doctors whether it's addiction or not ... It is to some people ... People shouldn't smoke'' - his remarks embarrassed even many of his own supporters.
What ought to embarrass them as well is Dole's absurd suggestion that only Democrats think smoking poses a threat to children, and that the ``liberal news media,'' in questioning his comments on addiction, were ``sticking up for the Democrats.''
The mind boggles at this lapse into partisanship. It's reminiscent of House Speaker Newt Gingrich's suggestion that Democrats were to blame when Susan Smith killed her two young sons by strapping them into her car and rolling it into a lake in South Carolina.
Republicans should be embarrassed, too, at the transparency of Dole's Pinocchio-like remarks concerning nonaddictive cigarettes. Plainly, he wants to keep the tobacco industry's contributions - which are in the millions since 1995 - flowing to his and other Republicans' campaigns.
Gleeful Democrats have been casting Dole as the industry's puppet. But let's not forget that many key Democrats in Congress have made a career of cultivating tobacco contributions.
Meanwhile, the Clinton-Gore campaign has run ads to take advantage of Dole's faux pas. The ads starkly present smoking's dangers for children. In itself, that's fine. What isn't so fine is the partisan context: The result is an implication that anti-smoking messages are nothing more than another squabble between Democrats and Republicans.
Smoking is a health issue; it shouldn't be a partisan issue. Give Dole demerits for turning it into one, and to his Democratic critics for keeping it that way.
LENGTH: Medium: 51 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESby CNB