Page 2/The Battalion/Monday, January 27, 1986
Opinion
Banning magazine ads won't snuff out cigarette smokin
The American;
Medical Association
wants to ban all ciga
rette and tobacco
product advertising.
Glenn
Murtha
By now, you’ve probably noticed the ab
sence of cigarette advertising on tele-
Most of us are too young to remem
ber the infamous Marlboro Man gallop
ing into the sunset with cigarette in
mouth. Congress stopped the advertis
ing of cigarettes on television and ended
the ride of the Marlboro Man Jan. 1,
1971.
Today, the only glimpse of the Marl
boro Man is in the pages of a magazine
or on the face of a billboard along the
highway. If the AMA has its way, these
too will disappear.
We are all aware of the dangers of
cigarette smoking. You may have no
ticed the stronger Surgeon General
Warnings on cigarette packages and ad
vertising. The new warnings appear in
equal rotation and state:
1. Smoking Causes Lung Cancer,
Heart Disease, Emphysema, And May
Complicate Pregnancy.
2. Smoking By Pregnant Women May
Result In Fetal Injury, Premature Birth,
And Low Birth Weight.
3. Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon
Monoxide.
4. Quitting Smoking Now Greatly Re
duces Serious Risks To Your Health.
These stronger warnings replace the
familiar “The Surgeon General has de
termined that cigarette smoking is dan
gerous to your health.”
The new warnings are a step in the
right direction. But the AMA wants to
go too far. What’s the next thing they’ll
try to ban? Cigarettes themselves? The
advertising of foods with high choles
terol? Automobiles? After all, driving
can be hazardous to your health. The
list is endless. A few years back, the
AMA tried to ban boxing. It never
caught on.
Doesn’t the AMA have better things
to do than to silence speech or stop ac
tivities they don’t agree with? Surely a
better way exists to lessen the incidence
of cigarette smoking than preventing
the tobacco companies from speaking
freely, from advertsing their product.
The incidence of cigarette smoking
actually increased after the television
ban. Before the ban, broadcasters were
required to carry equal time for public
service, anti-smoking messages. These
messages actually proved more effective
in deterring smoking than the cigarette
ads did for encouraging it. When the
cigarette ads stopped, so did the anti
smoking messages. Broadcasters are no
longer required to carry them.
The ban on television advertising of
cigarettes was challenged in court but
upheld. Traditionally, the courts have
made a distinction between commercial
and political speech and have been less
willing to protect commercial speech.
Free speech is free speech and this dis-
tiction is ending. Lawyers, pharmacists
and other professionals are now per
mitted to advertise. .
Presently, the tobacco, advertising
and publishing industries, and the
ONE OP TUESE IS
UAZARPOUS TO
YOUR UEALTU.
GUESS WHICH THE A.M.A.
WANTS TO BAN ?
American Civil Liberties Union, are
joined in opposition to the AMA’s pro
posal. Legislation to ban cigarette adver
tising would have to muster support in
Congress, win approval of the president
and survive a court challenge before it
could take effect. The chances of suc
cess are minimal.
Instead of working to ban cigarette
advertising, the AMA should use its in
fluence to get cigarette advertising back
on television along the public service,
anti-smoking messages. Pictures of a dy
ing man or woman coughing up blood
while wired to a respirator wc
tainly overshadow the Marlborc
galloping into the sunset.
Glenn Murtha is a senior politic®
ence major and a columnist f#
Battalion.
What if we lost?
Fear of nuclear war makes us ignore overriding questid
“Mein Bruder ist
in die Armee,” I said
to the German cou
ple behind the coun
ter of their tiny spe-'
Cynthia
Gay
cialty shop. They both broke into
approving, delighted smiles, reaching
out to me for a customary German
handshake.
To them, I was no longer a dubious
tourist invading this untarnished foot
hold of Bavarian tradition, 50 kilome
ters from the Czechoslovakian border.
But rather, I was in their eyes an Ameri
can connected with a much larger pur
pose: preserving freedom.
This scene was re-enacted repeatedly
over the Christmas holidays during our
family’s two-week sojourn in Deutsch
land. We went to be with my brother,
who is serving his third year on border
patrol in his armored cavalry squadron.
We returned to the States not only with
strengthened family ties, but with a re
newed sense of hope for America and
our NATO ally.
The American military is protecting
the West Germans from the the ever-en
croaching forces of communism. Sta
tioned all along the East German-
Czechoslovakian border, U.S. Army
troops maintain a constant vigil of what
the guys on the other side of the fence
are up to.
Sometimes it’s not too pleasant. My
brother told me about one East German
border guard who tried to escape to
freedom. He had to pass through three
rows of barbed wire fences, numerous
mine fields and open land constantly
patrolled by search lights and dogs. He
had to risk leaving his wife and children
— all border guards behind the Iron
Curtain must be married to help insure
their unwillingness to escape.
For this soldier, freedom became an
irresistable attraction, and one night he
made a dash for it. His fellow guards
shot him down as he neared the actual
border line. Some American soldiers
later found his body rolled up against
the fence, just a hairbreadth from es
cape.
About three million East Germans
freely left their country in the 1950s, be
fore the 1961 erection of the Berlin
Wall. Many still seek to get out; some
make it. As you can see, they risk every
thing to reach the “Freistaat,” or free
state of Bavaria.
Several of the Germans that live in
the little towns dotting Bavarian farm
lands also have known the confines of
communism before they came to West
Germany. These people can now work
and eat and sleep a few kilometers from
this threat with the assurance that the
American military forces will hold the
line.
We have a 40-year record of success,
and the Germans I met were still grate
ful. No wonder that when I said the
words “America” and “Armee,” I re
ceived many a strong smile and a hearty
handshake.
But wait just a darn minute. I bet you
thought all Germans were united in re
sistance to the American military and
our deployment of nuclear weapons in
their country. Sure, our actions are un
popular among many West Germans,
especially the youth who do not know
the costs of freedom but fear a nuclear
war. However, anti-nuke demonstra
tions are not as vogue as they once were
in Germany’s central cities.
Ask any American officer stationed in
Germany, and he’ll tell you that the
United States’ presence still is not com
pletely appreciated — except near the
border. Under the shadow of commu
nism, these West Germans are eager to
make our GIs feel welcome.
It seems rather ridiculous that one
has to leave the States, fly across an
ocean, most of Western Europe and
come within a relatively short distance
of the Iron Curtain before encounter
ing united resistance to communism. It’s
as if we in the free world have been so
programmed by our media and our pol
iticians to fear a nuclear war, that we
wish to ignore the overriding question:
What would happen if we ever LOST
a war?
It’s not a comforting thought, and yet
we constantly refuse to consider the pos
sibility, or rather probability, that com
munist forces could defeat our nation
without blowing up the world in a nu
clear holocaust.
The Soviet Union has never slowed
its build-up of conventional forces.
They outnumber us in manpower 3:1
and in tanks 10:1. As one lieutenant told
me, that means if we were to pull to
gether 50 ranks in a skirmish at the Ger-
man border, we’d be hopelessly
matched up against 500 Soviet tanks.
Cut the defense budget?! Absurd, but
sadly true.
Now more than ever, we need more
soldiers, more tanks and more smarts.
But the General Accounting Office is
now mandating under the Gramm-Rud-
man law that we cut our military pro
grams by 4.9 percent. While we strip bil
lions of dollars from our national
defense, Social Security remains un
touched.
Should we secure our freedom as a
nation or our personal retirement? So
cial Security is far from secure itself, but
many Americans persist in kidding
themselves that a potential government
handout will be worth more to them
than an M-1, or an F-16 or a fewGI
One day Americans may be fort
become individually responsibl
their freedom. In Germany, asin
West European countries, ai!'
men are required to serve a feM
the military. They don’t protest
they know they are aiding the
peace.
All our S ALT talks and hope I
continued negotiations with the j
Union have never convinced the
peans that they ought to put ah
their military training. Even no#
Gorbachev has proposed we
world of nuclear weapons by tk
century, the Europeans still areh
ing to stay prepared for the defer
their countries.
Reagan is a popular guy in W
Europe. He is trusted.
Gorbachev? Well, about 50 year
a little Austrian with a distinctive
tache also proposed that the na»
the world cut back on their resp
military defenses. Hitler’s olive
was intended to hide his intents
conquest.
Must we be fooled again?
r
Cynthia Gay is a junior journals
jor and a columnist for The Battik
You haven’t come far enough, baby
New York Gov.
Mario Cuomo is
upset about “in
creasing referen
ces” to Yiis ethnic
ity. He’s tired of
people making an
issue of his Italian
heritage. He’s =
tired of bigoted
remarks about
him. Most of all, =
he’s tired of feeling
i L
Michelle
Rowe
that people are
udging him by his roots rather than by
is ability as a politician.
Columnist Andy Rooney recently
wrote an open letter to Cuomo disput
ing Cuomo’s claim that people are pick
ing on him because he’s Italian. Rooney
said the claim is baloney, that Americans
don’t care what politicians are as long as
they like them.
There is some truth to that — if
Americans like a politician they don’t
care what he is, or at least they’ll find it
in themselves to overlook what he is. Af
ter all, these same Americans voted a B-
rated actor into the office of president,
and before that a peanut farmer from
Georgia, and before that a hick rancher
from Texas and before that an Irish
Catholic with a funny accent.
But Rooney is being a bit naive about
Americans. He’s giving them more
credit for open-mindedness than they
deserve. Americans may not care what a
politician is as long as they like him, but
what he is certainly affects whether they
like him.
Has there ever been a black, a Jew, an
Italian or a woman president of this
country? No. And please, don’t tell me
that’s just an unfortunate coincidence.
But Rooney seems to think it is coin
cidence, or at least not as significant as
Cuomo thinks it is. Rooney wrote about
a sign displayed in a crowd after Cuomo
;d a man
pardonec
convicted of being in
volved in the killing of a police officer.
The sign read: “KILL A COP. GET PA
ROLED BY THE WOP.” Cuomo saw
the sign as a personal attack against his
heritage and evidence that Americans
are prejudiced.
Rooney said the sign was written by
the kind of “ignorant, bigoted American
who joins the Ku Klux Klan or the
American Nazi Party,” and is not typical
of American voters.
He’s right about the idiot who wrote
the sign. And I sincerely hope that kind
of ignorant, bigoted thinking is not typ
ical of Americans. But I’m not so sure.
Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is
all too prevalent.
Rooney’s on the right track. It
shouldn’t matter to voters who a per
son’s parents were, or what color his
skin is, or what gender she is. And
Americans have come a long way since
the days of segregated restrooms and
all-male corporate meetings. We’ve
crossed over religious, social and geo
graphical boundaries to elect people
who never would have been elected 20
years before •
But Americans haven’t come as far as
Rooney seems to think. He’s ahead of
most Americans. He doesn’t judge peo
ple by their roots because a person’s
heritage shouldn’t matter. But it does.
Americans still have a long way to go be
fore they honestly can say they are living
up to the Bill of Rights.
When we vote for a politician — or
choose our friends — extraneous fac
tors such as race, religion and sex
shouldn’t even come into play. We’ve
had an actor and a peanut farmer in the
White House, why not an Italian ex-sec
ond baseman?
Maybe someday.
Michelle Powe is a senior journalism
major and Editor for The Battalion.
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United States
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