Dole Lays Drug Fault on Fashion and Hollywood

Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole suggested Saturday that President Clinton and people in the entertainment and fashion industries are partly to blame for an increase in drug use.

After deploring the bomb that killed two people in Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park early Saturday, Dole used the weekly Republican radio address to attack Clinton and people “in places like Hollywood and New York” on the drug issue.

Without actually blaming Clinton, Dole said he had met many people “who are as bothered as I am by the fact that since President Clinton took office, the monthly use of illicit drugs has increased by an average of 79%--yes, 79%--for students in the eighth to 12th grades.”

Republicans have tried in several ways to suggest that Clinton tolerates drugs. For example, they have made much of the fact that some White House staffers once used drugs.

That effort was undercut this week when the keynote speaker for the Republican National Convention next month in San Diego, Rep. Susan Molinari of New York, acknowledged that years ago she had occasionally used marijuana. She said she now opposes drug use.

Dole said the use of heroin, along with that of other drugs, is “skyrocketing,” but some people in the entertainment, fashion and recording industries “insist on glamorizing its use.”

On the other hand, Dole said, one record company recently refused to sign a band until its singer completed drug rehabilitation.

“I urge the recording industry to continue to take steps to clean up its act,” he said.

Dole asked people living in New York and Hollywood, “who have the ability to influence our children,” to “look in the mirror every day before you go to work and ask yourself if what you will do that day will send a false and deadly message to America’s youth that drugs are harmless fun.”

At the beginning of his address, Dole asked for a “silent prayer” for the Atlanta bombing victims and said the perpetrators would be found and punished.