Smoking Ban

* Those of us who have lost someone to lung cancer know the painful truth of Surgeon General Joycelyn Elder’s simple words, “Tobacco addicts and it kills” (Feb. 25).

Thank you for bringing this issue to the forefront in your editorial, “Smoke Gets in Lawmakers’ Brains” (Feb. 27). All Californians need to write letters and speak out now in an effort to help clear the smoke out of the lawmakers’ brains so that they will finally pass the state’s workplace smoking ban.

Toronto’s first biochemical proof of secondhand smoke dangers supports the fact that smoking is a serious public health issue needing a public health solution. It must be treated as the addiction that it is. We need low-cost government supported programs to aid people in quitting. We also need money allotted for programs to go into the schools to reach children and teen-agers, the group that is seeing an alarming rise in smoking.

Like drugs, teen-agers need to be taught not to give in to peer pressure on this issue.

Let’s not simply castigate the smoker for his fatal and human mistake while we sit back and do nothing in the way of a solution.

DEBORAH WEINBERG

North Hollywood

* Your editorial urging that “California should show the way by finally passing its own workplace smoking ban” is worrisome to me, as an entrepreneur and a pipe smoker. California has been trying to “show the way” for years with all types of well-intentioned taxes, regulations and state interference--but what we’re doing all too frequently is showing the way to Nevada, Arizona, Texas and other states less inclined to meddle with their residents.

RICHARD NEWCOMBE

Los Angeles