Letters: Smoking, at home and abroad

Re “Smoking’s global grip,” Opinion, Jan. 21

Thomas J. Bollyky writes the following:

“Step by step, the government cracked down on tobacco. Warning labels were added to cigarette packages (1965), cigarette advertising was banned on television and radio (1971), smoking on commercial airline flights was forbidden (1987), and tobacco products were put under Food and Drug Administration oversight (2009).... U.S. criminal and civil tobacco lawsuits exposed and punished tobacco companies for decades of obfuscation and malfeasance.”

And yet that same government still uses taxpayer funds to subsidize tobacco farming. American schizophrenia rules the day.

Paul Krassner

Desert Hot Springs

How is this not murder: Luring people into smoking (for your profit) when you know there’s a good chance it will kill them — and doing this 1 billion times?

Ellen Petty

Los Angeles

My wife and I have spent the last three months in Europe; we’ve been amazed at the number of smokers we have encountered.

Austria (to the disappointment of many of its people) recently made laws for a second nonsmoking room in restaurants. The bars, though, have no desire to follow the laws. Greece is going up in smoke all over the place, and dining inside is very difficult without inhaling clouds of smoke. They believe their financial crises is ebbing; just wait until the health costs from smoking take effect.

Many of the kids we see have a cellphone and a cigarette. With all the information we have on smoking’s effects, it would appear they don’t care.

Rich Lindroos

San Diego

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