Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, April 4, 1994                   TAG: 9404020094
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: EXTRA 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ben Beagle
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHEN A SMOKE WAS STILL A SMOKE

There are some things you just can't get ready for.

We are talking here, my fellow Americans, of yet another dumb thing being done to our native tongue.

We are talking here of the growing use of the phrase "nicotine delivery systems" _ which means common cigarettes or "jangies" as we once, for now obscure reasons, called them in Radford. Such language takes away our ability to understand our existence or to preserve our history.

Where would romance be in this country if we had thought of cigarettes in those terms when that leading man lit two of them and gave one to his leading lady?

I don't like to think of the demoralizing effect it would have had on our troops in World War II to hear the sergeant say: "Take five and smoke your nicotine delivery systems if you got 'em." I think we might have lost the war.

Enough's enough, pal. Any of you older people out there know what would have happened to our culture if that old wartime slogan had been: `I'd walk a mile for a mild, mild nicotine delivery system."

We'd have thought they were talking about a secret weapon.

What about that great Foreign Legion movie in which Claudette Colbert played this bewitching girl called "Cigarette"? If Ronald Colman had called her a "nicotine delivery system" she would have busted him in the mouth.

You may think I'm getting excited over nothing, but just remember that American young people quickly pick up such nonsense.

Wait until your granddaughter says: "I sure am glad you stopped using those old nicotine delivery systems, Gramps."

And you have to be nice and say: "Yep. Had my last nicotine delivery system on Aug. 6, 1986, and then I started worrying about these fat delivery systems."

These youngsters will see old cowboy movies and say alarming, sickening things like: "Gee. I didn't know cowboys rolled their own nicotine delivery systems."

And it won't get any better. It never does. We have "parenting" _ which means raising children _ and we have "interfacing" and "glass ceilings" and "gender gaps" and much, much more.

And I'm afraid you can bet the day will come when you go to the ABC store after they've rearranged the shelves and have to ask where they put the Old Forester alcohol delivery systems.