Source: Oakland Tribune Contact: Sun, 28 Jun 1998 Author: Associated Press Editor note: This article appeared on the same page with two other tobacco articles: "Government Explains Tobacco-Growing Rights" and "Investing in Tobacco Just Being American" TOBACCO SUBSIDIES AND ETHICALLY CHALLENGED "DOCTORS" Doctors' tobacco holdings: 193 million cigarette packs Ethicist terms findings 'shocking' RALEIGH, N.C. - Hundreds of doctors across the country own and profit from tons of tobacco, despite decades of health warnings, scolding from peers and in some cases their own ethical reservations. They're family practitioners who warn teenagers not to smoke, psychiatrists who treat addiction, oncologists who identify malignant tumors and surgeons who remove them. One tobacco-owning doctor was a longtime regional medical director for the American Cancer Socieiy. Another runs a public health department. A third writes a newspaper's health tips column. Almost none smoke. "I won't smoke," says Stephen Jackson, an orthopedic surgeon in Paducah, Ky., who co-owns the government rights to grow 1,400 pounds of burley tobacco a year. "I mean, It will kill you." All tell their patients not to smoke or chew tobacco. "I get mad with them, fuss at them every day," says Richard Rush, a family practitioner from Conway, S.C., with more than 11,000 pounds of flue-cured to-bacco allotted to his farm. Nonetheless, they are among at least 760 doctors and other health care workers who own valuable federal tobacco-growing rights, known as allotments or quotas, according to a computer analysis by The Associated Press. They practice in 23 states, from Florida to Alaska, Massachusetts to California. Some of the doctors own minuscule government rights, as little as 21 pounds annually; one in South Carolina has 932,000 pounds. All told, these doctors control production of more than 7 million pounds of tobacco -- enough to make 193 million packs of cigarettes a year. They also grow nearly 290,000 pounds of the varieties of leaf used in chewing tobacco and cigar wrappers. At last year's sales prices, their leaf would be worth $13 million - although a large portion of that goes to family members, sharecroppers and those who lease much of the crop. For professionals who have taken an oath not to do harm, those numbers are "shocking and disappointing," medical ethicist Arthur Caplan says. "I think you just cannot argue that you're going to make money on the back of this obvious health menace," says Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the Universiiy of Pennsylvania. "To own and farm and produce tobacco as a doctor, especially in small communities, sends a resoundingly wrong message." "I'm too greedy," George Burrus, a cardiovascular surgeon in Nashville, Tenn., says when asked about his decision to keep his 6,500-pound quota, even though he says he knows tobacco is "killing people." He clears about $4,000 a year from leasing his leaf. - --- Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)