Cigarette smoke is harmful

To the editor:

I would like to respond to the letter writer whose comment was, “Who are you to say I can’t smoke? … It’s a legal substance … .”

Yes, tobacco is a legal substance. However, cigarettes contain approximately 600 ingredients that, when burned, create more than 4,000 chemicals. At least 50 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer, and many are poisonous.

Many of these chemicals are also found in consumer products, but these products have warning labels. While the public is warned about the danger of the poisons in these products, there is no such warning for the toxins in tobacco smoke.

Here are a few of the chemicals in tobacco smoke, and other places they are found:

• Acetone – found in nail polish remover

• Acetic acid – an ingredient in hair dye

• Ammonia – a common household cleaner

• Arsenic – used in rat poison

• Benzene – found in rubber cement

• Butane – used in lighter fluid

• Cadmium – active component in battery acid

• Carbon monoxide – released in car exhaust fumes

• Formaldehyde – embalming fluid

• Hexamine – found in barbecue lighter fluid

• Lead – used in batteries

• Napthalene – an ingredient in mothballs

• Methanol – a main component in rocket fuel

• Nicotine – used as insecticide

• Tar – material for paving roads

• Toluene – used to manufacture paint

It is also now known that you do not have to actually smoke a cigarette to be endangered by the smoke.

Inhaling secondhand smoke causes lung cancer in nonsmoking adults. The U.S. surgeon general estimates that living with a smoker increases a nonsmoker’s chances of developing lung cancer by 20 to 30 percent. Research also suggests that secondhand smoke may increase the risk of breast cancer, and increase the risk of leukemia, lymphoma and brain tumors in children.

Secondhand smoke is associated with disease and premature death in nonsmoking adults and children exposed to secondhand smoke are at increased risk of sudden infant death syndrome, ear infections, colds, pneumonia, bronchitis and more severe asthma. Being exposed to secondhand smoke slows the growth of children’s lungs and can cause them to cough, wheeze, and feel breathless.

Third-hand smoke is generally considered to be residual nicotine and other chemicals left on a variety of indoor surfaces by tobacco smoke. This residue is thought to react with common indoor pollutants to create a toxic mix. This toxic mix of third-hand smoke contains cancer-causing substances, posing a potential health hazard to nonsmokers who are exposed to it, especially children.

Studies show that third-hand smoke clings to hair, skin, clothes, furniture, drapes, walls, bedding, carpets, dust, vehicles and other surfaces, even long after smoking has stopped.

So while cigarettes are legal, the effects of smoking them are not limited only to the smoker, which is why there is a need for regulation.

I invite anyone who is interested in learning more about the dangers of smoking to visit the website of the Tobacco-Free Program at www.tobaccofreeflorida.com or the American Lung Association at http://www.lung.org/stop-smoking/.

Karen Deitemeyer

Chair

Osceola County Tobacco-Free

Partnership

Member, Osceola County American Lung Association Leadership Board

Fair to whom?

To the editor:

I like those catch phrases like, “the least among us” and “extending a helping hand,”  when making a liberal talking point about taxes or minimum wage. It sounds so giving and Christian!

The truth is, however, it is a deceitful purpose far removed from those noble causes. The very title of “minimum wage” has in fact been hijacked by socialists, such as the National Employment Law Project. On one hand they can use it with false, Christian, helping hand public statements and sell it to unsuspecting voters, while on the other hand and behind the scenes, their contributor supporters can inflate wages up and down the economic ladder and otherwise damage our economy. Therefore I call it, “The Minimum Wage Lie.”

I am not hinting at all, nor do I see through a prism of jealousy, spite, greed or any other adjective. I am definitely saying that minimum wage increases, as we know them today, are directly related to inflation. Is that the only cause of inflation? No, but it is a major factor and also one of the very few brakes to inflation we have left; or should I say, “had.”

Minimum wage laws were once a noble and necessary cause. Today, because the title has been hijacked by the socialist movement, it has nothing to do with “the least among us.” It is at the very least a bargaining chip if not an outright wage benchmark for union collective bargaining. That means that a minimum wage increase also increases the cost of labor, goods, and services farther up the ladder. The subsequent increases in union wages are many times higher than the small increases in minimum wage.

Is inflation of a fiat money supply that difficult to understand? High union wages benchmarked to the minimum wage, which is tied to the cost of living, increases the cost of living, which increases the minimum wage, and so goes the inflationary spiral. Some would have us believe that an increasing cost spiral serves as a deterrent to inflation? Maybe that is why everything we buy these days is made in China. They can still add and subtract.

Fairness in taxes? Speaking of federal income taxes, the upper 50 to 60 percent (roughly) of all wage earners pays 100 percent of the income taxes to the federal government. How much more fair can it get? Even if we confiscated 100 percent of the wages of the top 50 percent of wage earners, it still would not be enough for the entitlement debt we are running up.

(Warren) Buffett was talking about capital gains and not wages. In case you did not know, there is a very large difference. Simply stated, invested capital fires the economy that creates jobs. The president of the United States, of either political party, likes to take credit for creating (or saving?) jobs, but they have little to do with that except they can get in the way.

As a teenager, I was told of two profound theories. First, Social Security would not be available for me when I reach retirement. Someone did the math way back then. At 59 years of age, that very well may happen yet.

Second, “divide all money and property equally among all people in the USA (I am sure they were referring to a capitalist USA) and in five years it will be right back in the same pockets as it was before.” I am sure there would be minor exceptions, and we can never prove that, but does anybody doubt it? Why do you think that would be the case?

Michael Hall

Kissimmee