Letters To The Editor: For a Legal Product, Tobacco Gets a Bum Rap

For a Legal Product, Tobacco Gets a Bum Rap
Editor, Times-Dispatch: So the feds now want to regulate big tobacco. Every day, the FDA, concerned citizens, and state and local government come out with onerous restrictions, regulations, and taxes targeting the tobacco industry. Enterprising lawyers strike it rich with punitive damages levied by sympathetic juries. It would appear that American tobacco is in the crosshairs of an increasingly hostile populace and rapacious federal government.

Yet while government agencies are ratcheting up the pressure on this very lucrative industry, we're told that we're losing the war on drugs. All the experts tell us that we should lessen the penalties for drug offenders or simply legalize these addictive and destructive substances.

So as we persecute the consumers and producers of a legal product, the illegal product -- drugs -- are viewed with ambivalence and their deleterious effects are dismissed or diminished. We're told that since we can't win the war -- why not regulate and embrace it?

Taxing, regulating, and penalizing Big Tobacco is not going to make them or their health risks go away. But it will make their jobs, revenues, pensions, and economic benefits go away. Perhaps they'll relocate to foreign shores where they can market their product more profitably and efficiently. A net loss of jobs and revenue is hardly what this country needs right now.

Maybe the answer is to criminalize tobacco. Then victim advocates, lawyers, and demagogues can go to bat for the tobacco industry, instead of treating it like a piñata stuffed with cash.

Tom Eaton.
Chesterfield.

Last year all four major global temperature tracking outlets released data demonstrating that over the prior year, global temperatures had significantly decreased. The four sources were the UK Hadley Climate Research Unit, the Remote Sensing Systems of Santa Rosa (Microwave Sounder Unit), the University of Alabama, Huntsville (John Christy), and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) Land-Ocean Global temperature index data. The amount of cooling recorded from these sources ranged from 0.65C to 0.75C, all within a single year. This range was large enough to effectively counter the total global warming recorded in the past 100 years. The last year overall warming was observed was 1998. Since then, the data back Ryan's claim that global temperatures have decreased.

Carbon dioxide is but a minor contributor to warming (water vapor being by far the major player). Because CO2 absorbs heat only in limited bandwidths, it cannot absorb an unlimited amount of infrared radiation and at present levels is already near saturation. Furthermore, a mechanism for CO2 levels driving climate has never been shown to exist, so it doesn't matter whether more CO2 is being produced by termites or human activity. Plants are just as happy, regardless of the source.

What drives the climate? Most likely it is variation in the solar flux. If Elser requires more information, I suggest he do an Internet search on the above data sources, along with the Maunder Minimum, the Medieval Climate Optimum, and the hockey stick curve fraud.

James Miller.
Richmond.

Well, what about Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito? Both she and they sprang from white European ancestors -- hers from Spain via Puerto Rico, theirs from Italy. Since she's as white as they are, her view that a Spanish-Latino heritage trumps other European-American stock is bogus.

Why does she think Latina women's insight is better than white men's? First, they lead tougher lives, thus have more empathy. Hard ethnic experiences "affect the facts that judges choose to see," as if Latinos can embrace some truths and ignore others according to whim. Second, she implies that females are smarter than males.

Consider Justice Clarence Thomas. A black man, he started at life's low end of the totem pole. Because he is in a bona-fide minority class, maleness is the only strike against him, as it is against Alito and Scalia. His African heritage cancels his gender handicap and balances Sotomayor's Latino roots, so she will highly respect his conservative viewpoints. Empathy will prevail and she will love Thomas as her equal. Think so?

Of course, the muddled maze of white Latino vs. white Italian, black vs. white, and male vs. female is absurd. What happened to liberals' professed ideal of color-blind and sex-neutral diversity? D.L. Johnson. Chesterfield.