By Rick Van Sant, Post staff reporter
RIPLEY, Ohio - Celebrating a plant that can kill you doesn't faze officials of the Ohio Tobacco Festival.
''What's there to apologize for?'' wonders retired tobacco farmer Bill Pfeffer, puffing on a pipe at the 17th annual event. ''Tobacco is a legal product.
''I know smoking is bad for you,'' admits the 73-year-old president of the Ohio Tobacco Growers Association. ''But I've been smoking 55 years and it hasn't killed me yet.
''Anyway, if you don't drink beer, you can still go to a beer festival. So, even if you don't smoke, you can still come to the Tobacco Festival and we'll ! treat you like friends.''
In return, the tobacco growers are hoping for a little sympathy in a society where smoking is labeled a killer and the federal government is at war against tobacco.
''We're fighting for our livelihood and we're not going to give up,'' said tobacco farmer Bob Koehler. ''It's a way of life in southern Ohio.''
Some 6,700 tobacco growers in 22 Ohio counties produce 30 million pounds of tobacco a year and are paid $57 million for it.
Tobacco growers say they contribute more than $200 million a year to Ohio's economy, while the state collects $400 million annually in tobacco taxes.
Tobacco also provides a big chunk of the economic base for property tax support of Southern Ohio schools.
So, while tobacco may be politically incorrect in Washington, it's seen as something to celebrate in the 1,800-person tobacco town of Ripley, 50 miles east of Cincinnati.
The festival, which opened Thursday and continues through Sunday, is expected! to attract 75,000 people. There's lots of food, crafts and non-tobacco activities to complement theme events like a tobacco-spitting contest.
The festival's roots go back to 1981 when the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. hosted a ''Pride in Tobacco'' party for local growers.
''They wanted to make sure we would keep raising tobacco for them,'' said Koehler. ''After that, we said maybe we should have a tobacco festival of our own. And we started it in 1982.
''Some people said it would fail after two or three years, but it keeps getting bigger. People come from all over - Texas, Louisiana, Canada - cause it's a good festival and we don't push tobacco down anybody's throat.''
But the tobacco theme is always just around the corner.
Bumper stickers proclaim: ''Ripley, Ohio, a town that celebrates tobacco (believe it or not)'' and ''Ripley, Ohio, where you can smoke 'em if you got 'em.''
The Ohio Tobacco Growers Association booth encourages members ''to tell our sto! ry. . .we can't substitute Belgian endive or corn and make a living for our families.''
Pfeffer said opponents ''are always suggesting that we grow something else, but if we grew tomatoes or watermelons, we couldn't sell them cause there's already too many of them.''
''We have small, hilly farms and tobacco is about the only thing we can grow,'' said Koehler.
As for producing a product that can kill people, Pfeffer retorts, ''Enough Old Granddad (whiskey) will kill you, enough Hudepohl (beer) will kill you.''
''Meat's not good for you, either,'' noted Koehler.
''What would happen if the government made a law that everybody's got to smoke?'' wondered Pfeffer. ''Everybody would be against it, because people want the freedom to choose.''
© Copyright 1998, The Cincinnati Post. All Rights Reserved.