TOBACCO IS DEADLIEST

The Dec.27 article "States' tobacco funds going up in smoke" reports the
emerging fight for funds that is faced by those involved in tobacco
education and prevention programs. In the Dec. 26 list of top local
stories, you cite the recent story about heroin deaths by describing heroin
as "county's deadliest drug problem." By those words you prove how much
tobacco education is needed, either to teach you how serious the problem
really is or to counter the influence the tobacco industry's money has over
the media in general.

Tobacco clearly has been, and is, the county's, as well as the nation's,
deadliest drug problem. While heroin killed 33 users in Lane County last
year, tobacco killed 657 in 1996, the last year for which there are
figures. In fact, tobacco kills more Americans than do heroin, cocaine and
all the other illegal drugs combined, plus those killed by AIDS, alcohol,
homicides and automobile accidents. these figures come from the Oregon
Death Certificate Statistics File and the National Institutes of Health.