Dole Scores Clinton on Tobacco Controls

Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole opened a new front in his electoral battle with President Clinton on Thursday, criticizing the administration’s plans for regulating tobacco and suggesting that smoking is not necessarily addictive.

Answering questions during a floating fund-raiser on a paddle-wheeler in the heart of tobacco country, Dole said he agrees that cigarettes should be kept away from children and that he “didn’t mind closing down vending machines and things of that kind and putting them out of the reach of children.”

But the “more serious question,” he said from the Belle of Louisville as it steamed down the Ohio River, involves the Food and Drug Administration’s plans to treat nicotine as a drug, allowing the agency to regulate tobacco.

“I don’t think the FDA has the authority to do what they want to do now,” Dole said.

He expressed doubt about “whether the FDA . . . should claim the jurisdiction and determine that cigarettes are a drug. Then you in effect are banning cigarettes and production of tobacco.”

Dole, on the second day of a campaign swing through several states, followed his riverboat trip with a rally in Louisville that attracted about 1,000 people.

Clinton carried Kentucky in 1992, but tobacco growing is one of the mainstays of the state’s economy and the FDA’s move to regulate the substance is unpopular with some voters here.

Overall, however, Clinton strategists believe the tobacco issue is a winner; they view it as one of a cluster of “family-friendly” proposals with substantial public appeal. And how much it hurts Clinton in tobacco-growing states remains in doubt. Even in Kentucky, recent polls show him with an edge over Dole.

Clinton’s focus has been on finding ways to keep teenagers from taking up smoking, calling the habit “a pediatric disease.” Just last month, he demanded that tobacco companies “do the right thing” and end all advertising targeted at young people.

Also during Clinton’s term, the FDA conducted a nearly two-year investigation of tobacco. The agency concluded that nicotine was a drug--because of its addictive properties--that came under its jurisdiction.

The FDA said its power to regulate tobacco came from its drug statutes and its authority over medical devices, since cigarettes were “drug-delivery” systems.

Dole previously has questioned the FDA’s jurisdiction over tobacco, but Thursday’s comments were his “most extensive to date,” said spokesman Nelson Warfield.

“I wish the FDA would spend a little more time on medical devices, including new drugs,” said Dole, who insisted that tobacco affects different people differently.

“Is it addictive?” he asked. “To some people, smoking is addictive. To others, they can take it or leave it. Most people don’t smoke at all. I hope children never start.”

Responding to Dole’s comments, Clinton’s reelection campaign issued a terse press release inferring that the Republican’s views were influenced by tobacco company contributions to a now-defunct conservative think tank he had founded in the early 1990s.

“Apparently, when it comes to Dole’s policies, you get what you pay for,” the statement said.

During his Louisville speech, Dole attacked Clinton on another front, criticizing the president for his veto earlier this year of a bill to prohibit so-called partial-birth abortions. The candidate said the Clinton veto was “the worst thing that he’s done since he’s been president of the United States.”

But for Dole, the evidence also continued to mount that despite his efforts to mollify the GOP’s warring factions on the abortion front, the issue remains nettlesome for him.

Last week, Dole pledged that the GOP platform adopted at the August convention in San Diego would retain existing language calling for a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. But he also said he wanted the document to include a “declaration of tolerance” for those Republicans with different views. He then angered conservatives by specifying this week that the declaration be inserted directly into the abortion plank rather than in the platform preamble, where it could refer to a variety of issues.

Christian Coalition Executive Director Ralph Reed warned Dole on Thursday that he faces a potentially losing fight in San Diego on the placement issue.

“I think either the Dole campaign makes a big issue out of this and tries to force it into the pro-life plank itself, in which case there will be resistance, . . . or they just throw it out there and don’t make a major issue out of it,” Reed said during a luncheon meeting with Los Angeles Times editors and writers.

He added: “Our sense is that a majority of the platform committee delegates are not going to want it attached only to the pro-life plank.”

Also Thursday, GOP sources confirmed that Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), the chairman of the platform committee, is among those upset by Dole’s desire to insert the tolerance language into the abortion plank. A spokesman for Hyde, Sam Stratman, reiterated Hyde’s strong feeling that language on tolerance must cover “a multitude of issues” and not simply abortion.

Warfield, the Dole spokesman, said Thursday night that in response, the candidate plans to meet with Hyde next week. Dole “wants to hear [Hyde’s] concerns face-to-face, Warfield said.

And in Louisville, the crowd at Dole’s rally was peppered with signs bearing antiabortion slogans, as well as others emblazoned: “Choose a Pro-Life V.P.”

Don and Elizabeth Meinshausen of Radcliff, Ky., were among those saying that abortion is the No. 1 issue for them.

“If [Dole] changes the platform, he probably won’t lose our vote,” Don Meinshausen said. “If he chooses a liberal or moderate vice president, there’s no way he’ll get our vote.”

Today, Dole will make stops in Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina.

Times staff writers Marlene Cimons and Edwin Chen in Washington and Bill Stall in Los Angeles contributed to this story.