THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 20, 1996 TAG: 9607200001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A11 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty
LENGTH: 74 lines
Suddenly everyone is talking tobacco.
Bob Dole seems addicted to the subject, although he isn't sure nicotine is habit forming. President Clinton, between puffs on his designer cigars, condemns cigarettes. Earlier this week talk-show host and cancer patient Morton Downey Jr. checked out of the hospital and bounded onto the Larry King Show to preach against smoking as only a reformed smoker can. Even our own state attorney general, James Gilmore, weighed in on the subject.
My most memorable discussion about tobacco was with a former IRA gunman in the early 1980s. He convinced me that nicotine was one of the most powerful drugs on Earth.
This man was infamous for masterminding an audacious helicopter rescue at a Northern Ireland prison. He was later captured and served time in a British prison.
What does tobacco have to do with this? A smoker, deprived by British soldiers of his cigarettes, cracked and ratted on this IRA man.
Upon his release from prison this IRA leader refused to ever again work with smokers for fear a second addict would turn him in. He formed the first nonsmoking IRA unit in Belfast - a curious combination of urban guerrillas opposed to smoking but not to killing.
Whenever I hear people like Bob Dole question the habit-forming powers of nicotine I think of this IRA man and how one of his soldiers - a tough guy who had risked his life for their cause - betrayed his fellow terrorists for a smoke.
Surely, no sensible person doubts the addictiveness of cigarettes.
My mother is living proof that people will smoke cigarettes even when they know they are shortening their own lives.
She begins radiation and chemotherapy next week for a tumor on her left lung so large it has cracked a couple of her ribs. This is her second bout with the killer disease. She quit smoking four years ago, clearly too late.
When James Gilmore announced that Virginia would not join other states in suing the tobacco industry for health-care costs, he said it was improper to seek reparations from tobacco companies because of bad decisions made by smokers.
Mr. Gilmore, my mother did not decide to smoke.
But I'll tell you who did: Back in 1942 a slender 17-year-old girl succumbed to slick advertising and the glamour of smoking. Tobacco companies were touting their menthol brands as being healthy when she took her first puff.
Like most teenagers she never thought she'd someday be a 70-year-old woman with grandchildren she adores and lungs so damaged by cigarette smoke that it's unlikely she'll see them reach their teens.
Patients sick or even dying from cigarettes today are not the same people seduced by advertising into stupidly smoking that first cigarette. Those were just kids doing dumb things. They got hooked while they were young and thought they were immortal. By the time they knew better, they couldn't stop.
Some studies show that the younger someone begins smoking, the greater his or her addiction to nicotine.
Evidence is also mounting that cigarette manufacturers not only knew all along how dangerous their products were but probably fiddled with nicotine levels to ensure that people like my mother spent their adult lives hopelessly addicted.
If you got caught peddling addictive street drugs to children, you'd face a long prison sentence. In the tobacco industry, it's just good business.
Good business was another reason Gilmore gave for not suing tobacco companies. At least 20,000 Virginia jobs depend on the tobacco industry. Those are nice, safe jobs. After all, the customers are hooked.
They tend to die young, but thanks to Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man, a steady crop of young smokers take their place.
Bob Dole is 72 years old. By now many of his friends must have died of smoking-related ailments, yet he says he's unconvinced that nicotine is addictive.
I urge him to come meet my mother. If that fails, I know a guy he could talk to who used to be big in the IRA. MEMO: Ms. Dougherty is an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. by CNB