Ex-Tobacco Lobbyist Joins Clinton in Fight on Smoking : Address: Former industry spokesman, who is dying of throat cancer, gets together with President for radio message. He makes his appeal to young people.

WASHINGTON —  The White House stepped up its campaign against tobacco Saturday as a former tobacco industry lobbyist who is dying of throat cancer joined President Clinton in the Oval Office to urge young people to stay away from cigarettes.

“It’s too late for me, but it’s not too late for you,” Victor Crawford, 63, said in a raspy voice during Clinton’s weekly national radio address. “I smoked heavily and I started when I was 13 years old. And now in my throat and in my lungs, where the smoke used to be, there is a cancer that I know is killing me. . . . Use your brain. Don’t let anybody fool you. Don’t smoke.”

On Thursday, the President unveiled a series of regulatory moves intended to limit smoking among the young, including having the Food and Drug Administration treat nicotine as an addictive drug, restricting tobacco advertising and promotions targeted at the young, and enforcing state laws against selling cigarettes to minors.

Crawford, a gregarious and legendary figure at Maryland’s Statehouse in Annapolis, once sported pricey three-piece suits and pinkie rings and served as a state senator, a trial lawyer and, finally, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry.

He was paid up to $200 an hour, he recalled, to buttonhole old friends in the state Legislature and persuade them to drop anti-smoking measures.

Four years ago, however, Crawford joined the millions of smokers who are stricken with cancer. Since then, he has candidly told interviewers that he deserved just what he got and was stupid enough to adopt the attitude that “it won’t happen to me.”

With his health declining, Crawford has spoken out during the last year not only about the dangers of smoking but also about the evils of marketing campaigns designed to hook teen-agers on cigarettes.

The tobacco firms will use “any marketing gimmick, any trick, to make you want to smoke,” he said. “As tobacco kills off people like me, they need kids like you to replace me.”

The President praised Crawford’s courage and candor and said his suffering showed the need to stop smoking among the young.

Studies have shown that most of the 40 million to 50 million Americans who smoke began before age 19. While smoking seemed to lose its appeal for young people in the 1980s, a recent survey by the University of Michigan found a 30% increase in smoking among eighth-graders from 1991 to 1994. Last year, the survey estimated that 31% of high school seniors smoked.

“Teen-agers don’t just happen to smoke. They’re the victims of billions of dollars of marketing and promotional campaigns designed to say . . . ‘smoking is sexy; it will make you more attractive,’ ” Clinton said.

“Your personal struggle, Mr. Crawford, and that of millions of other Americans who suffer from smoking’s consequences, show why we must act and act now,” Clinton said.

Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), selected to give the Republican response to Clinton’s radio message, spoke about welfare reform legislation and urged that the states be given freedom to run welfare as they choose.

Republicans in Congress have been noticeably silent on the tobacco issue and have neither endorsed nor opposed Clinton’s initiative. Cochran made no mention of tobacco in his remarks.