NO BLACK MARKET

I'm afraid if you "Pass Amendment To Ban Tobacco Sales" (Letters Monday),
you'll only create a black market underground for cigarette sales. In New
York, where they just placed higher taxes (to discourage smoking) on
cigarettes, there is a burgeoning market of lower priced, untaxed, illegal
cigarettes, smuggled into NY from out of state.

New York wants to institute more severe criminal penalties for selling
these untaxed smokes. Perhaps even stiff prison sentences will be offered
up shortly. Then maybe mandatory minimum prison sentences.

Prohibition is the least effective means possible for controlling illicit
substances. Just look at drug prohibition and the drug war. All sorts of
drugs are prohibited by law. But they are found, on sale, in every town in
America.

You cannot control the sale of desirable products by prohibition. It's
never worked in the past and won't work now.

Kim Hanna Worcester, Mass