Addiction to Smoking

Your March 6 story on the lives touched by lung cancer is a sad one indeed. Certainly it is sad for the people directly involved. It is also sad for our society.

Sadly, it is some of our leaders who are responsible for this. Some politicians accept money from tobacco interests; they are also responsible for the continuation of major tobacco subsidies to farmers in some states, for our society’s failure to put big and realistic warnings on all tobacco, and for allowing tobacco to be exported from the U.S. to other countries. We are doing more damage to the health of people of other countries than other countries (such as Colombia) are to doing to us with drugs (such as cocaine).

Because tobacco products kill and maim more Americans than AIDS, illegal drugs, guns and traffic accidents combined, we need to get real with what our priorities should be. One of the best places to start would be the polls. We should all take part in firing politicians who finance elections with tobacco money.

STEPHEN V. HYMOWITZ

Los Angeles

* So Claire, Christine, Joe and Brady are concerned that 12-year-old Jessica might take up smoking? Not to worry, she will have all she can handle in coping with the illnesses she will contract from secondhand smoke, so why not smoke?

DORIS J. McCLARY

Placentia