FORWARD
N.Y., July 19, 1996
The Myth of Cigar Smoking
It is disingenuous that you find the Democrats at fault for dallying, in your words, over the Nation of Islam’s voter registration drive request, which you write is a moral blind spot, while you regularly promote death and disease to children and teens in editorials (attacking anti-tobacco Congressmen), advertising and articles.
The latest, a restaurant review in Fast Forward titled “Sushi and Cigars” (Forward, July 5) with an accompanying graphic of a smoking cigar, leads one to think that smoking cigars is all right.
With teenage smoking at its highest level in a decade or more, you should be ashamed. Legal as smoking is, where is the morality of promoting a product that will cause so much pain and grief to so many? The current fashion of cigars, promoted by articles such as yours, presents quite a myth. Cigar smokers suffer appallingly high rates of cancers, die earlier from heart disease and coronaries and suffer immeasurably from this trendy activity.
Kenneth Akiva Segan, Seattle, Wash.