INCONSISTENT VIEWS ON NICOTINE, OTHER DRUGS

Could we please have some explanation for your confusing editorial
positions concerning addictive substances? You consistently refer to
illegal drug addiction as a "disease," and you often side with those
crowding the "treatment" trough for taxpayer money.

But in your July 18 editorial ("Florida jackpot"), you say tobacco pushers
shouldn't have to pay because people are addicted to nicotine by "the
choices they knowingly made, the risks they willingly took."

Are you suggesting that if heroin and cocaine were to become legal, using
them no longer would be a disease, but just a "personal responsibility"
thing? And that the scumbag cartels thus would have no responsibility for
the lives they have destroyed with their product?

A.L. Bishop, San Diego