This trick is even more effective when you start with a smaller base. Unfortunately for Dole, marijuana has never actually killed anybody, so far as we know. In the face of such fear-mongering, looking at the absolute rates of use helps keep things in perspective. Troubling though teenage drug use may be, the solutions proposed by Dole and Clinton are far more worrisome. Clinton's plan to regulate the marketing and distribution of cigarettes through the Food and Drug Administration is part of a campaign to treat tobacco more like a controlled substance.
Censorship is just the first step.
Clinton and Kessler have insisted that banning tobacco is out of the question, since the consequences of creating a huge black market would be unacceptable. Yet the American public has been perfectly willing to accept such consequences for the last eight decades, since the onset of the drug war that Bob Dole wants to intensify. As smoking declines and becomes increasingly concentrated in lower socioeconomic groups, tobacco could one day become another target in the war on drugs. Then people like Bob Dole and people like Bill Clinton may have nothing to argue about.