November 03,2006

Letters: Vote yes on Amendment 4 to cut huge tobacco toll

I want to call readers' attention to Amendment 4 on Tuesday's ballot ("Spend money, save lives," editorial Oct. 24). Amendment 4 will go a long way to protect Florida's children and young adults from being lured into a lifelong addiction to tobacco.

Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death in Florida, claiming more than 28,700 lives each year. The cost to the state is $5.8 billion annually in health-care bills. This amounts to Florida taxpayers handing over $554 per household, per year, to help pay for the state's smoking burden. More from Opinion
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Florida's highly successful tobacco education program in 1998 was financed at $70 million. This was cut to just $1 million in 2004, where it has remained unchanged. This means that of the more than $360 million that the state collects from the tobacco settlement annually, less than 0.1 percent now is used to educate Florida's youth about the dangers of tobacco use. Meanwhile, the tobacco industry continues to pump more money every year into marketing its deadly products in Florida. Big Tobacco spent just under $400 million on marketing in Florida in 1998; today, that total has swelled to about $1 billion.

Supporters of Amendment 4 believe that Florida owes it to its youth to spend 15 percent of the annual tobacco settlement money - approximately $57 million each year - fighting Big Tobacco. By utilizing tobacco settlement money to finance a comprehensive, statewide tobacco education and prevention program in Florida, the state can help combat Big Tobacco's efforts to hook kids on tobacco.

Additionally, by preventing kids from becoming adult smokers, Florida can help reduce the enormous financial costs and taxpayer burdens associated with smoking. Vote yes on 4.

CAROL RUGGERI,

executive director

American Lung Association of Florida

West Palm Beach

Abstinence-only education logically is mostly useless

The column by Elisa Cramer, "Trading on a name, not the facts," in the Oct. 20 issue pertaining to Alveda King's talk on abortion was right on target.

It is an almost logical certainty that forbidding education on birth control, opposing public financing of child-care assistance and adoption programs and other child welfare programs, and reducing aid to single mothers in any community (not just the African-American community) will compound the number of unwanted children or children born to an unready parent or parents and increase the number of children who are victims of abuse and neglect, even at the hands of not only their parents but the state "systems" as well. The rate of abortion can only be decreased by decreasing unplanned and unwanted pregnancies in the first place.

Knowledge and education always have been empowering to the individual as well as the community. Not teaching our children the options they have to avoid unwanted pregnancy in addition to the consequences, spiritual and emotional, of abortion, is the true evil, not the other way around.

Birth control may not be the first choice in limiting unwanted pregnancies, but when a majority of teenagers already are sexually active, promoting abstinence is just plain ludicrous. Most adults will not or cannot practice abstinence; how can we possibly expect our sexually active teenagers in the throes of puberty and the excitement of becoming adults to do the same?

CHRIS SCHEER

Port St. Lucie

Don't dilute democracy; vote no on Amendment 3

I applaud The Post's recommendation to "Reject higher threshold to amend constitution" (Oct. 23 editorial) by voting no on Amendment 3. As the editorial clearly points out, the amendment was placed on the ballot by lawmakers at the urging of well-financed special interests.

These groups (insurance companies, developers and Big Sugar) have no interest in protecting Florida's Constitution but want to keep the citizens silent on important issues. Amendment 3 would create a 60 percent vote requirement to pass any amendments to the people's constitution instead of a democratic majority of 50 percent of those voting, plus one. If Amendment 3 passes, Florida will be the only state in the country with such a difficult barrier, something that is against the very foundation of our democracy.

LAURA GOODHUE

Palm Beach Gardens

Death Row numbers needed some context

The bits of info on Florida's Death Row from The Palm Beach Post are in need of some context - that is, if you can get past the feelings of revenge that heinous murders so often generate to consider the cost ("Florida's Death Row, by the numbers," Oct. 25).

The daily cost of $72.39 to house a Death Row inmate means little. Consider what happened in New York when the state reinstated the death penalty in 1995. It cost $160 million, or about $23 million per killing. Life in prison without parole is a much cheaper alternative to execution and still protects the public. But perhaps Florida has a better cost ratio for killing?

Now, if you don't feel comfortable talking about human life in terms of dollars, ask yourself whether the death penalty is worth the cost of killing an innocent person. Florida has released more innocent people from Death Row than any other state, 22 since 1973. Those exonerated spent about 150 years in prison combined. And they were the "lucky" innocents on Death Row.

BONITA EIDEN

West Palm Beach

Magnanimity to bombers not an option for Israel

In an Oct. 12 letter in The Palm Beach Post, the writer was extremely magnanimous in suggesting that Israel forgive Palestinians for suicide bombings as the Amish forgave the murderer of the schoolchildren ("Let Israelis take lesson from forgiveness of Amish").

The letter-writer overlooked the fact that suicide bombings are part of a plan to destroy Israel. Furthermore, a majority of Palestinians elected Hamas to represent them with the full knowledge that Ismael Haniya, their new prime minister, openly has declared that his party will destroy Israel in stages.

WILLIAM K. LANGFAN

Palm Beach

Minor column surgically cut through Foley faÁade

I commend Emily J. Minor for her incisive column of Oct. 24, recapping the "Foley chronicles" ("Closer look at hunt reveals true nature of the predator"). She surgically cut to the chase and sagely concluded that former U.S. Rep. Mark Foley was, in fact, a voracious predator who treated each oncoming wave of male congressional pages as his personal delectable smorgasbord, a vile record of conduct that assures a seat for Foley in the hottest confines of purgatory.

GENE MOORE

Boynton Beach

Here's an idea: Institute a 'do not call' list for pols

Isn't it marvelous that politicians helped us get a "Do not call" list established into law to stop advertisers from interrupting our quiet dinner time? Now, however, the same politicians find it acceptable (and legal) to bother us at home with their own sales pitches asking us to elect them to office. Any politician out there brave enough to introduce a "Do not call" list for politicians?

Source: http://www.palmbeachpost.com/