Copyright 1995 The Baltimore Sun Company
The Baltimore Sun
May 16, 1995, Tuesday,
SECTION: TELEGRAPH (NEWS), Pg. 3A, Newswatch... ON THE NATION
LENGTH: 705 words
HEADLINE: FDA chief urges anti-nicotine push
SOURCE: From Wire Reports
BODY:
While the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not yet decided whether it has the power to regulate nicotine as a drug, agency commissioner David A. Kessler has called for a campaign to stop youngsters from becoming addicted to tobacco.
"Nicotine addiction begins as a pediatric disease, yet society as a whole has done little to discourage this addiction in our youth," Dr. Kessler said in a lecture at Harvard Medical School yesterday. "We owe it to our children to help them enter adulthood free from addiction."
Dr. Kessler called for a comprehensive approach: making it harder for youngsters to get cigarettes and smokeless tobacco, telling them the serious health hazards and limiting advertising.
* Seven high school students in Wheeling, W.Va., pleaded guilty yesterday to smoking on school grounds and were fined the maximum $ 5 plus $ 62 in court costs. They also faced a day's suspension from school. Unabomber hunt:
At the request of the FBI, forest rangers and sheriff's deputies in remote areas across California are searching for evidence that the elusive Unabomber has tested his deadly devices on national forest land in the Sierra Nevada.
The mysterious bomber, who authorities believe lives in Northern California, has mailed or placed devices that have killed three people and injured 23 since 1978. In a recent letter to the New York Times, the Unabomber said he was growing weary of "searching the Sierras for a place isolated enough to test a bomb." Grandmother charged:
A Franconia, N.H., woman was charged yesterday with attempted murder after giving her two granddaughters an anti-depressant drug at their home on Mother's Day, the attorney general's office reported.
Virginia Rowell, 45, was expected to be arraigned today in Littleton District Court. Ms. Rowell, who also ingested the drug, was arrested at Littleton Hospital, where she remains hospitalized. Amber Rowell, 8, and Alyssa Rowell, 2, were reported in stable condition at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center. Sexual abuse plea:
A Lebanon, Ohio, high school principal once accused in a murder-for-hire plot pleaded guilty yesterday to sexually molesting his former stepson.
Clarence Wilkinson was charged with gross sexual imposition for allegedly using force five years ago to sexually abuse the then 13-year-old boy.
Wilkinson, 44, once was accused in what police said was an aborted plot in which he and his ex-wife tried to hire the same hit man to kill each other. The charge was dropped later, prosecutors said.
* Glenn Harris, 33, a New York City gym teacher who ran away with a 15-year-old ninth grader two months ago, returned to New York to turn himself in, a school spokeswoman said today. The economy:
Housing starts rose 0.4 percent in April, the first advance in four months, due to a gain in multifamily building. Construction of single-family homes continued to fall despite lower mortgage rates.
The Commerce Department said today that construction of new single-family homes and apartments totaled 1.24 million at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, up from 1.23 million in March.
* Led by a steep drop in auto production, industrial output fell 0.4 percent in April to its lowest level in nine months, recording back-to-back declines for the first time in more than three years.
* Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan today called for a stepped-up attack on the federal budget deficit, warning that the United States can't count on foreign money indefinitely to finance its economy.
In a speech prepared for delivery to the National Association of Realtors, Mr. Greenspan also stressed the importance of price stability for the long-term health of the U.S. economy. For the record:
A Maine woman and her four nieces -- ranging in age from 5 to 8 -- were found by searchers yesterday after spending a cold, damp night near a cranberry bog outside Middleborough, Mass. . . . Arizona reinstated the chain gang yesterday. . . . Convicted murderer Christopher Scarver, 25, was given two more life terms yesterday after pleading guilty in the beating death of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and another inmate in a Wisconsin prison. Recycled home
GRAPHIC: PHOTO,ASSOCIATED PRESS,When robins built their nest in a fence at the recycling center in St. Joseph, Mo., city employees cut a plastic milk jug and added it for protection from rain, then built a sun shade with an old plastic lid. The mother is sitting on three eggs.