ETS! encourages comments, feedback, tips, corrections, and info! Please keep them as concise as possible so we can print as many different voices as possible: ETS!, P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145, or e-mail ets@scn.org.

Just Remove the Whole Cancer Stick

Hey Geov:

You said (correctly I believe) that people start smoking because of the way young people get hit with two things: It's COOL (ie. Joe dick-head Camel) and It's FORBIDDEN (thanks to the law, government, parents, teachers, etc). Then they keep smoking becaus e of the tobacco corporations' manipulation of ADDICTIVE substances within cigarettes.

Thus, I think the solutions are really quite simple:

1) Make it UnCool: End tobacco corporations' abilities to advertise in any but the most boring way. Make them only able to provide basic information without pictures or music and, of course, include prominent warnings. Hmmm... why limit this advertising p olicy only to tobacco?

2) Make it UnForbidden: End legal restrictions for young people on purchase of tobacco. Controversial? Yes, but we all know the fastest way to make young people want something is to tell them they can't have it. The new attitude is: "Sure you can smoke i f you want to. And here is some information about what you'll be ingesting." Make that information as graphic and grotesque as possible to match the grotesque taste they are about to experience. Some young people will still try smoking, but much fewer tha n when it is given the allure of the forbidden. I'm concerned that this new blitz of anti-smoking campaigning will backfire and create interest in smoking amongst young people. I also am concerned that tobacco corporations' willingness to pay for such cam paigns reflects their psychological savvy in how to market their product to young people. The harder the anti-smoking campaigns try to say "don't," the more kids may say "what am I missing?" For those kids that do try smoking, see the next idea below.

3) Make it as Non-Addictive as possible: This means regulating the content of tobacco in the strongest spirit of the FDA's mandate to protect the public and their effort to define tobacco as a controlled substance. Make tobacco companies pay for research to discover ingredients that would counteract the addictive qualities. Require complete disclosure of all ingredients, just like any other pharmacutical company has to comply with. If it's possible to remove nicotine, then why not just remove it completel y?

Solidarity, --Scott Reed

There Once Was A Gay Named Enola...

ETS!,

Hoorah for the pirates of Seafair And warplanes a-roaring aloft there It's "all in good fun" To rape, pillage and plun- Der as long as it's women, NOT software!

--woosey@ccc.wa.com

Greedy Citizens Fear Social Safety Net

Relieved you wrote about Boeing-McDonnell Douglas merger. It's not size (power) of this conglomerate as much as what McDonnell produces. Seattle is now the biggest "war machine" producing city in USA. Sadly, Boeing stockholders voted 96% for this merger. (Wouldn't a solid social safety net in this country eliminate some of the fear/greed of its citizens?) Between Boeing and Bill Gates' megalomaniacal greed (power hunger), what's happened to this most livable city? Is there nothing Americans won't do for money?

--Dorian Doe, Green Lake