THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 19, 1996 TAG: 9607190002
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: 47 lines
Attorney General James S. Gilmore III has announced that Virginia will not join nine other states in suing tobacco companies to recover public money spent on smoking-related illnesses.
No surprise there. Virginia is stuck in a conundrum: Its economic health depends upon a death-delivering product.
Despite a blizzard of no-smoking ordinances passed throughout the state, the tobacco industry remains a powerful force in Virginia. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reckoned earlier this week that about 20,000 Virginia jobs are dependent upon the tobacco industry.
No one running for high office in Virginia dare oppose the tobacco behemoth.
Gilmore, who has his sights set on the Governor's Mansion in 1997, accepted about $20,000 from the tobacco industry between 1993 and 1995. Gilmore's presumed rival, Democrat Don Beyer, accepted $34,500 from the tobacco industry from 1992 to 1994.
Both U.S. Sen. John Warner and his Democratic opponent, Mark Warner, have a hands-off attitude toward the tobacco industry too.
Powerful lobbying and fat wallets have won tobacco lots of friends in Richmond. These friends passed legislation that would, in effect, hamstring the Attorney General should he decide to sue tobacco interests to recoup the money the state spent on health care for poor people sickened by tobacco. The legislation requires that each victim of tobacco be named in the suit and proof be presented that tobacco actually caused the injury.
At least Gilmore is somewhat honest about why Virginia will not sue: The tobacco industry, he said, is a ``key ingredient of the state economy.''
That is unfortunately true. Nevertheless, while this ``key ingredient'' employs thousands of people, it also addicts, sickens and then kills thousands more every year. The U.S. surgeon general long ago designated smoking as the leading preventable cause of premature death in the country.
Gilmore says it is wrong for states to call upon the industry to make reparations for the ``individual decisions of people'' to smoke. That reasoning is hopelessly naive.
The fact that the tobacco industry peddles an addictive product makes smoking more than just a bad decision on the part of smokers. The goal of the tobacco companies is threefold: (1) to entice young people to try their product, (2) to hook them with nicotine once they do and (3) to keep them puffing until death do they part. by CNB