Pubdate: Thu, 05 Apr 2001
Source: South Florida Sun Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2001 Sun-Sentinel Co & South Florida Interactive, Inc
Contact: http://southflorida.sun-sentinel.com/services/letters_editor.htm
Website: http://www.sun-sentinel.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1326
Author: William Bramberg

EDITORIAL OVERLOOKED LETHAL TOBACCO, ALCOHOL

The March 28 editorial attacking the use of medical marijuana stressed its 
use as based "on anecdotal testimony of sick people." It is evident this 
editorial was written by an individual who is a healthy, pain-free person 
who needs only to reflect the Sun-Sentinel/Chicago Tribune conservative 
bias. In the same issue, an article pointed to the deaths of 
tobacco-smoking women, who now die in greater numbers than women with 
breast cancer. You also state little change has been found in the past 10 
years in the number of women who continue to smoke, but you do mention the 
increase in teenage smoking.

Where is your rage against the tobacco industry? Where is your response to 
eliminating the tobacco industry by making the production of tobacco 
products illegal? After all, they are the cause of deaths of more men and 
women than any other medical problem. You state the industry spent more 
than $8 billion in 1999 on tobacco advertising and their ads are cunning, 
enterprising and overpowering to those addicted to smoking. Where is your 
wrath against the tobacco industry? How can you equate medical marijuana as 
you did to heroin and cocaine and only mention the withdrawal problems of 
medical marijuana?

I humbly suggest you direct your editorials to the No. 1 killer, "tobacco," 
and its effect on all human beings, men, women and teenagers.

WILLIAM BRAMBERG, Weston
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