Chapter 32 Political issues

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Political issues: Bob Dole and the 1996 Presidential Campaign

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In 1986, Bob Dole joined Connecticut Senators Christopher Dodd and Lowell

Weicker in a letter to the government of Hong Kong on behalf of Greenwich-based US

Tobacco company. The letter urged Hong Kong not to ban smokeless tobacco and

implied that the United States might engage in trade retaliation if it did. Dr. C. Everett

Koop wrote in his memoirs, "I imagine they thought it was more important to save a

Connecticut firm's profits than Asian lives."

Washington Post National Weekly Edition, May 27, 1996, p. 14

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During the 1985 federal budget negotiations, a bipartisan bill was introduced in

Congress to raise excise taxes on chewing tobacco and make it less affordable to

adolescents. Dole defeated the measure (simultaneously slipping in a tobacco

growers' subsidy crafted by Sen. Jesse Helms). As Common Cause magazine

reported, Dole promised he would reconsider the excise tax hike if the pending

surgeon general's report linked smokeless tobacco to oral cancer. The 1986 Surgeon

General's report did; the Kansas senator didn't. "Dole was very loyal to the

smokeless tobacco industry," a former industry representative told Common Cause .

"He was someone that they could rely on in Congress to derail legislation."

Quote from Mother Jones magazine, May-June, 1996, p. 3

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Bob Dole has total tobacco industry contributions of $477,000, and has flown 38

times aboard tobacco industry corporate jets. He commented that smoking is not

necessarily addictive; former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said that Dole's

remarks "either exposed his abysmal lack of knowledge of nicotine addiction or his

blind support of the tobacco industry." Dole in response to Katie Couric on the Today

show suggested that "perhaps a little bit" Koop had been brainwashed by the liberal

media, and also created more controversy by his statement "We know it's not good

for kids. But a lot of other things aren't good...Some would say milk's not good."

Los Angeles Times, June 16, 1996, p. 16, San Francisco Chronicle, June 28, 1996,

and San Francisco Examiner, July 7, 1996, p. B7

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Monday, July 24, 2000

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