The Butt Stops Here

I was pleased to see my favorite pastime, cigar smoking, profiled in your pages (“The Big Stink,” by Colman Andrews, July 23).

While the cigar has always been a “power smoke” in Hollywood, it has evolved into much more. Today it serves as a bonding element among people who might not otherwise have anything in common. It is also a subliminal slap at all those bureaucrats who insist on running our lives by legislating what we can and cannot do.

Thanks for recognizing the 9 million of us who enjoy the pleasure of smoking a good cigar. And Andrews can rest assured that most of the celebrities who smoke in public also do so in private.

Richard Carleton Hacker

Beverly Hills

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For some time, I’ve been considering various romantic strategies to sweep Demi Moore off her feet and lure her away from husband Bruce Willis--for instance, by offering her a million dollars for a single night of wild, passionate kisses. But now that I know she sits around the house (and, God forbid, goes to bed?) with cigars in her mouth, I’ve changed my mind. Willis can have her.

Does anybody know whether or not Sandra Bullock likes stogies?

Al Ramrus

Pacific Palisades

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Andrews is glad that cigar smoking has become so popular. While that may, as he says, be good for cigar store owners and manufacturers, it is decidedly not good for people who presently smoke cigars or others who will now choose to start because of cigars’ renewed popularity.

Cigar smoking, even when inhaling is not involved, has been proven to cause oral, throat and esophageal cancer, all of which can kill or maim. And the smell of cigar smoke is much more pervasive and long-lasting than that of cigarette smoke. Many of us find it offensive to be near a cigar smoker, even outdoors.

Andrews should have mentioned the negative aspects of cigar smoking while he reveled its unfortunate current popularity.

Dr. Stephen M. Greenberg

El Monte