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.

John McAnally,
Florence