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