Debate Over Smoking Bans

* Richard Rodriguez is right to ridicule the demonization of cigarettes (“A Dance With Death,” Opinion, May 22). Though not particularly pleasant, cigarette smoking is a minor hazard compared to the battery of present-day assaults on our collective health and safety.

If the anti-smoking campaigners could apply the same self-righteous zeal to controlling and ostracizing the chemical polluters, petroleum-driven automobiles, guns and their respective manufacturers, then the air truly would be cleaner and the environment a safer place for all.

Incidentally, my very healthy mother puffed her way through three healthy pregnancies. She would rather risk losing a few years of life than be deprived of her simple, and personal, smoking pleasure.

FRANCES ANDERTON

Santa Monica

* Your article regarding the payment of $950,000 by the tobacco industry to actors for placing their products in movies (May 19) once again highlights the hypocrisy of the entertainment industry regarding the ability of movies to influence social behavior.

The industry moguls stand up and loudly deny that the constant barrage of violence and antisocial behavior which they produce has any effect whatsoever on social attitudes, but the next day they accept money for placing products in the films, knowing full well that the money is meant to influence viewers’ habits.

It must work--why else would the money be offered? If showing people smoking in films (or showing Clark Gable without an undershirt) can cause a change in mores, does it not follow that continual showing of violence begets violence?

ROGER W. CLAPP

Rolling Hills Estates

* A former employee of Brown & Williamson Tobacco has leaked documents which indicate that 30 years ago one of their top executives stated that nicotine is addictive (May 17). Other memos show that the company vetoed marketing a safer cigarette, since it would reflect upon the safety of their other brands.

To counter this incriminating evidence, what do Brown & Williamson officials do? Of course, they sue the employee for theft of the documents. But since those very executives have denied knowledge of nicotine being addictive, they accuse him of stealing something which did not exist. Or are they worried that these “cigarette papers” may be the undoing of their elaborate cover-up? A smoking gun?

WILFRED COUZIN

Laguna Niguel

* The May 16 commentary by Loretta Scherz Keller, who identifies herself as a smoker-quitter-smoker-again, makes a number of good points regarding the difficulties of kicking the habit/addiction of cigarettes. In regard to her suggestion that the government fund clinics for smokers with a follow-up program for those smokers who revert to smoking, there is help currently available to smokers through a National Cancer Institute funded phone line--the Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.

Trained information specialists will counsel callers in stop-smoking techniques, make referrals to programs run by community groups such as the American Cancer Society and the Lung Assn., and mail out packets of materials to assist in the process. The CIS is available 9 a.m. to 7 p.m., has bilingual staff, and welcomes repeat callers.

BRENDA LARSEN

CIS Telephone Service Manager, UCLA