WEST HILLS, Calif. - Bob Dole, who is making teen drug use a defining issue of his campaign, scolded the entertainment industry yesterday for glorifying heroin and slammed President Clinton for showing "moral confusion" on drug issues.
In his third trip to Los Angeles to attack the purported moral failures of the entertainment industry, Dole singled out the 1993 American film "Pulp Fiction" and the newly released Scottish film "Trainspotting" as "widely praised movies ... that feature the romance of heroin."
Dole has not seen either film, but has read reviews, according to his press secretary Nelson Warfield, who repeated a campaign refrain from two earlier Hollywood-bashing trips by saying, "You don't have to look in every trash can to know there is garbage inside."
Dole delivered his speech at Chaminade College Preparatory High School, a private school in an affluent and mostly Republican suburb of Los Angeles County, about 20 miles northwest of Hollywood. The Catholic school is starting its second year of using drug- and gun-sniffing dogs for random classroom searches.
"I have a message to the fashion, music and film industries," Dole said, in what his campaign described as a major policy address. "Take your influence seriously. ... Stop the commercialization of drug abuse. Stop the glorification of slow suicide. ... Not because you are afraid of public outrage, but because you are responsible adults, with duties and standards."
While the entertainment industry was the initial target of Dole's ire, the GOP candidate reserved his most cutting comments for Clinton, who he said has "sent up a white flag of surrender" on illegal drug use and who he accused of "a naked failure of leadership."
In the most pointed language he has used against the president on the drug issue in the campaign, Dole charged that Clinton has sent "an implicit message to parents and children" on drugs that is "casual, permissive and liberal."
"Sometimes this implicit message has become very direct and directed at children themselves. Bill Clinton, you'll remember, was asked on MTV, before an audience of teen-agers, if he would inhale marijuana given the chance again. Laughing, he told them, 'Sure, if I could, I tried before.'
"Teenagers, many struggling with the lure of drugs, have seen a United States president make light of his own experimentation with drugs.
"A president is supposed to show the way. This president has shown moral confusion," Dole said.
Dole followed up on his criticism by unveiling a new anti-drug slogan that is a variation of the "Just Do It" of the Nike athletic shoe company. "Just Don't Do It," Dole said. "We will repeat this message as often as it takes. ... When we are accused of being simplistic and repetitive, we will repeat it again."
Dole's stop here was part of a three-state western swing that has focused on the issues of crime and drugs, which polls say are major worries of the electorate. The campaign, at least for the moment, has shifted its emphasis away from the massive tax cut that had been the dominant message of Dole's campaign. Polls show that a majority of voters do not believe Dole's claim that he can cut individual tax rates by 15 percent while balancing the budget.
Criticism of Clinton on the drug issue sharpened last month after federal figures showed a dramatic increase in teen drug use between 1992 and 1995. While acknowledging that drug use among the young is a growing problem, the Clinton campaign counters by saying that Dole, as senator, voted against Clinton proposals to increase drug education and treatment for the young.
By coming to center of the entertainment industry - an industry that has been lavish in its support of Clinton, Dole attempted to contrast his self-proclaimed "moral clarity" against what he said is a "conspiracy of silence" by Clinton, the elite media and the entertainment industry.
Dole quoted the main character in "Trainspotting," the film about young working-class heroin addicts in Scotland: "I choose not to choose life. I choose something else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got heroin."
Dole said he has seen reviews of the film that described it as "the first funny, upbeat look at heroin addictions." "Just what America needs," Dole noted.
The other film Dole mentioned, "Pulp Fiction," shows actor John Travolta, who plays a drug-addict hoodlum as a hip anti-hero. In the end, though, Travolta's character is shot to death.