TOBACCO KILLS MORE

To The Editor: Re "Fatal heroin overdoses claim two lives in one
week" (news article, July 26):

I'd like to ask: Why do heroin and other illegal-drug deaths often
make the front page, while deaths caused by tobacco rarely get
mentioned even in the obituary notices?

Our annual tobacco-versus-all-illegal-drugs-combined kill ratio is
about 23.5 to 1 (400,000 versus 17,000).

And the vast majority of our 17,000 deaths from illegal drugs are
because the drugs are illegal. Because certain (politically selected)
drugs like heroin are illegal, they are of unknown quality, unknown
purity and unknown potency -- just like alcohol was when it was illegal.

Kirk Muse