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By JOHN GOOLRICK
In the old days life was much simpler for the Virginia tobacco industry and the politicians who staunchly supported it.
I can remember legislators from the state's tobacco growing regions standing up in the General Assembly on a regular basis to extol the virtues of Virginia tobacco.
Not to be outdone, legislators from the Richmond area fell over themselves protecting the interests of tobacco manufacturers located in the region.
Tobacco was king and unassailable. If you didn't care to smoke it, you at least ought to chew it, its proponents said.
All that has changed and for some politicians, at least, it poses a real dilemma.
Attorney General Jim Gilmore, for instance, is now defending the right of the tobacco industry to advertise freely and without proposed new federal restrictions.
Gilmore, who will be his party's nominee for governor next year, filed an opinion in a North Carolina federal court seeking to avert FDA rules that it says are designed to reduce smoking among teenagers.
When news of Gilmore's action became public, Lt. Gov. Don Beyer, the prospective Democratic gubernatorial nominee in 1997, was quick to say, "I think what the attorney general is doing in &rong. He is opposing the best effort to keep cigarettes away from children."
So, at last, the issue of tobacco, a major crop and industry in Virginia, has become a statewide issue of significance on the state's political scene.
That is a natural evolution of heated disputes in recent years between tobacco proponents and anti-smoking activists. Congressman Tom Bliley, a Richmond Republican who is, perhaps, the tobacco industry's best and most powerful ally in Congress, has come under regular fire from some quarters for his defense of tobacco and
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