Source: San Jose Mercury News (CA) Contact: http://www.sjmercury.com/ Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jun 1998 TOBACCO LETTERS Tobacco bill deserved to go up in smoke CONGRATULATIONS to Congressional Republicans for shooting down the bloated-like-a-blimp tobacco bill (Page 1A, June 18). This bogus legislation had much more to do with Democrats' addiction to big spending than with smokers' addiction to nicotine. In preventing Democrats from satisfying their obsessive need for other people's money, Republicans showed real compassion. - -- Tom Kearney Jr. Scotts Valley I was dismayed at reading the president's comments, when referring to the demise of the Tobacco Bill: ``The Republicans should stop acting like politicians and start acting like parents.'' I then realized that there were two problems with this. The first is that our government is not there to be our parent. During the past 40 years, the government has increased its collection of the public's hard-earned money, and squandered it in protecting us from ourselves. The men and women of the American Revolution fought so that the government could serve to secure Americans' general welfare, not be our savior and create a welfare state. When there are people struggling in this country and being pushed down by government bureaucracies, there is no excuse to create another one. The second is that it is hard to believe the sincerity of a president who beats up on tobacco, when his own vice president has profited personally and politically from the growing of this substance. - -- Mark Cares Monterey WHILE I agree with Molly Ivins' column (Perspective, June 21), she is also missing the fundamental point regarding tobacco. Regardless of what the politicians do or don't do, tobacco and its related products are probably going to be with us for a long time. Trying to enact legislation is fruitless, as was Prohibition. In other words, it doesn't matter that the politicians once again were influenced by the money peddlers. The responsibility for keeping children from smoking rests with the parents, as does everything else like drugs, alcohol and moral behavior. The legislatures of this country are never going to replace parents with hypocritical taxes. - -- Dick Ribas Los Gatos - --- Checked-by: (Joel W. Johnson)