TOBACCO-OWNING MD'S URGE NONSMOKING

They control production of enough tobacco to make 193 million packs of
cigarettes a year

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 teen-agers 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 Society. Another runs a public health department. A third
writes a newspaper's health tips column.

Almost none smokes.

"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
tobacco 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," says medical ethicist Arthur Caplan.

"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 University of Pennsylvania. "To own and farm produce
tobacco as a doctor, especially in small communities, sends a resoundingly
wrong message."

The fact that many of these doctors grew up in those small communities is
often their reason for being involved in tobacco. Even so, some are uneasy
about it.

Although they might only get a nickel to 15 cents a pound for leasing their
tobacco rights to farmers, quotas help pay mortgages and add to the land's
assessed value. With talk in Washington about possible $8-a-pound federal
tobacco buyouts someday, the leaf could constitute an even more valuable
asset.

"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.

"I don't worry about it enough to (sell out) since I don't feel like, say,
the guy that's raising dope."

The AP identified these doctors by cross-checking a federal farm database
with medical rosters from tobacco states. To verify matches, the AP
contacted scores of physicians by telephone.

Some hung up when they heard the word "tobacco." Most who stayed on the
line expressed ambivalence.

"Absolutely schizophrenic" is how Dr. William Grigsby described the notion
of physicians growing tobacco.

"It's crazy, but I'll tell you why we do it," says the general surgeon from
Kingsport, Tenn., who owns about 3,700 pounds of quota. "Almost the only
doctors who raise tobacco have grown up on the farm and have the kinfolks
there."

One is Richard Calhoun. He was raised on a tobacco farm, and tobacco money
helped put him through college and medical school.

On Wednesdays, when other doctors hit the golf course, Calhoun dons bib
overalls and a baseball cap and drives a beatup red flatbed truck around
his mountainside farm in western North Carolina. He raises hay, cattle,
Christmas trees and about 7,000 pounds of burley.

"Tobacco is a proud heritage for North Carolina," says Calhoun, who
practices in Jefferson, near the Tennessee line. "I want to maintain that
part of my heritage."

So while he lectures his three children - ages 9, 11 and 13 - on the ills
of smoking, he makes sure they help out on the farm.

"They're still young, but they know what it is to work in the dirt and that
this is actually a cash crop that can be grown for farm income."

He knows the links between the crop he grows and diseases he treats, from
cancer to heart disease. Is that inconsistent?

"I do feel that tobacco is harmful to one's health," Calhoun replies. "But
more importantly than that, I feel that, as citizens of the United States,
we have the freedom of choice. And I don't think that governmental
regulation should infringe upon one's ability to make choices in this
regard."

Dr. Wendell Levi Jr. agrees. In 45 years as a thoracic surgeon, he has
removed cancer-ravaged lungs, but he has little sympathy for smokers.

"If they're stupid enough to smoke, that's (their) business, I suppose,"
says Levi, a Sumter, S.C., tobacco owner. "I've never had time to feel
guilty about something like that."

Others have thought about it - a lot.

John Patterson, family practitioner and owner of a 900-pound quota in
Irvine, Ky., has reached a moral bargain with himself.

He is the Kentuchy Medical Association's liaison with two farm health
groups and says the $230 a year he earns from tobacco pays for the gasoline
he uses traveling the state trying to help farmers diversify from burley.

"I think the question is: What is that doctor doing with that base?"
Patterson says. "That is the way I've dealt with my ethical dilemma."

Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)