ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Saturday, August 24, 1996              TAG: 9608260050
SECTION: VIRGINIA                 PAGE: C-5  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER

'WE'RE TRYING TO PROTECT KIDS'

PUBLIC HEALTH educators are thrilled with Clinton's announcement. They say big tobacco's marketing forces are just too powerful.

Debbie Sams, a nurse who spends her time trying to stop children from smoking, knows some folk will see President Clinton's latest anti-smoking plan as an assault on all smokers' rights.

But she says the president and others who are fighting underage smoking are trying to do something about a serious public health problem.

"Nicotine is an addictive drug, and you should be kind and sensitive to people who are addicted," she said. "We're not out there to be tobacco narcs. What we're trying to do is protect our kids."

Sams is a health educator with the Roanoke County/Salem Health Department and chairwoman of the Roanoke Valley's Alive and Well Coalition, which focuses on kids and smoking.

"We're trying get people in the Roanoke Valley to recognize that tobacco is an abused substance - just like alcohol and other drugs."

Public education efforts are important, Sams says, but they won't be effective without the sort of advertising limits and other government measures Clinton is proposing.

The tobacco industry's marketing machine is just too powerful, she says.

"How can I begin to compete with Joe Camel in everybody's face? They make it appealing. They make it a sexual, grown-up thing: 'You want independence, smoke this.'"

Neil Graham, who runs anti-smoking programs at the state Health Department, says tobacco companies spend $4.5 billion a year on advertising in the United States - about $100 a second.

By comparison, he says, the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and other government and private agencies spend perhaps $150 million a year in anti-smoking campaigns.

Tobacco advertisers, he says, "spend more in 2 1/2 hours than we spend in an entire year."

LENGTH: Short :   47 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS Staff. Debbie Sams, a health 
          educator with the Roanoke County/Salem Health Department, 
          acknowledges the health benefits of the Clinton plan.