Campaign to Retire Camel’s ‘Old Joe’

In your editorial you correctly state that “(R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.) . . . is free to run an advertising campaign as it sees fit. But this debate is not just about rights. It is about corporate social responsibility.”

I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I would urge R.J. Reynolds to take the ultimate “socially responsible” step and shut down its cigarette factories. Once that’s accomplished, we could pressure other socially irresponsible corporations to do the same. (McDonald’s, for peddling socially irresponsible high-fat burgers; Miller brewing, for hawking socially irresponsible inebriating beer, etc.)

Finally, with the entire world socially responsible, we could then sit back in our easy chairs, and await further instructions from our socially responsible newspaper editors at The Times. Ah, Utopia.

JOHN G. ANTONIOU

Sherman Oaks