Tobacco Lobby

State Assembly Speaker Curt Pringle and Health Committee Chairman Brett Granlund, both grateful recipients of money from the tobacco industry, have teamed up to thwart the will of the citizens and ease regulation of the cigarette companies (April 22). Offended by California’s aggressive education campaign on the negative aspects of smoking, Granlund says, “Those [anti-smoking] people don’t have a right to tell everybody else how to live.”

With 400,000 American deaths attributed to tobacco use each year, he should consider that he is, instead, telling “everybody else” how to die.

WILFRED COUZIN

Laguna Niguel

* To make a statement like “I’ll take free enterprise over political correctness any time” shows how lacking Granlund is not only in principle but also in intelligence. Smoking is not anything but a health issue. I don’t care if he kills himself with nicotine as long as he doesn’t exhale. What a pious, selfish person, to think he can pollute the air of everyone else just because he’s a smoker!

I wonder how many of his constituents suffer from asthma, emphysema, or any other breathing disorder? I wonder if he’ll ever be a second-term lawmaker?

LINDA-MARIE TISDAIL

Laguna Beach

* The Republicans are blatantly disregarding the will of the people and instead are siding with the purveyors of death. Why? That’s where the money is. But, what is that money going to do for them when they are voted out?

TONYA VALACAK

Torrance

* I find your continued use of misinformation very distressing. You use the figure of 400,000 as deaths attributed to smoking (editorial, April 23), although these numbers are nothing more than the figment of anti-smoking activists’ imagination.

There is no irrefutable proof that these numbers are gospel truth, and your continued use of them is a flagrant disservice to your readers. It would be nice to see you actually print the truth, as regards the way these numbers were reached, instead of perpetuating these myths!

RAY DOMKUS