GO AFTER BAD DRUGS, NOT BIG TOBACCO

How interesting it was to see the totally contradictory ideas in your
Oct. 1 issue. On Page A1 and A2 you featured the thrust to make it
easy, pleasant, and legal for drug addicts to satisfy (at public
expense!) their cravings for dangerous and addictive chemicals ("Give
it a chance," "Two centres, different approaches"). And your lead
editorial ("Tobacco lawsuit won't do the job") describes the attempt
to extract billions from the tobacco companies for their perfectly
legal (at the time) endeavours to sell their products.

Something is crazy around here. Tobacco ruins but a small percentage
of smokers, while cocaine and crystal meth are almost certain to
destroy the lives of almost all their users. Why are we making it easy
to become, and remain, addicted to hard drugs, and treating the legal
(and heavily taxed) use of nicotine as little short of a capital offence?

And how many pension plans will have to cut their payments to widows
and orphans when Big Tobacco is successfully bankrupted? The fat cats
in the boardrooms will come out as undamaged as a Gomery villain or a
Mint boss, while little old ladies are reduced to penury, and tobacco
farmers in Ontario lose their properties to the banks.

M.C. HALL-PATCH

Oak Bay.