Tobacco Regulation

* Re “High Court Wary of Classifying Tobacco as Drug,” Dec. 2: The Clinton administration’s plan to regulate cigarettes as legal drugs received a hearing before a hostile Supreme Court. U.S. Solicitor Gen. Seth Waxman, representing the Clinton administration, argued that leaders of major tobacco companies testified (and lied) under oath that they believed cigarettes were not addictive.

Justice Antonin Scalia, a smoker, simply replied, “No one believed them.” Excuse me? These men apparently lied under oath, and Scalia just cavalierly disregards it? Didn’t Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the court’s other smoker, preside over Clinton’s impeachment trial, the subject of which was the president’s removal from office for allegedly lying under oath?

SCOTT PHILLIPS

Norwalk

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* If Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was on the cigarette industry’s payroll I would see some justification for her illogical opinion that the nicotine sold in cigarettes is not a medicine, that is, a drug. Of course it’s not, until you’re hooked. Then you’ll require regular doses to cope. Just ask Rehnquist. Perhaps O’Connor and the other fine minds of the Supreme Court who share her opinion should ask themselves whether other addictive substances like morphine and cocaine should be declassified as drugs, especially since in their use they do not cause cancer, emphysema or deadly airborne agents harmful to others.

STEPHEN PITT

Moreno Valley

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* I applaud the Supreme Court’s skeptical stance on the FDA’s attempt to regulate tobacco. The Times may be displeased by the justices’ devotion to the “arid world of constitutional jurisprudence” (editorial, Dec. 3), but I thank God for it, especially when the alternative seems to be handing over yet another piece of my freedom to a coercive, health-ist state.

I do not owe my government the longest, most productive life I can possibly live, nor will I be taxed, regulated or socially vilified into behavioral compliance in furtherance of that goal. All of this talk about “preventable death” is colossally beside the point. Death isn’t preventable. If I die from the long-term effects of my vice, that’s my business. Period.

ANDREW PETERSON

Hawthorne