LETTERS: TOBACCO USE STILL A PERSONAL CHOICE

To the editor:

The use of tobacco has been in existence in some form or other for a very long time. The subject of its ill effects arises from time to time. I remember clearly back in the early 1920s how snuff used by inhaling was widely popular.

Packaged cigarettes were not as yet common. Tobacco was bought in little cloth pouches to use in pipes. Some even to chose to role their own cigarettes. Little packages of cigarette paper could be purchased at a local store. Would you believe I even rolled a few myself?

Smoking a pipe among men was popular as well as cigars. I always liked smelling the smoke from them. My father smoked both a pipe and cigars.

The old-fashioned way of helping to relieve an ear ache of a child was to blow the smoke from a pipe into the child's ear. I must admit it felt good to me.

As years passed, more and more cigarette companies became popular, encouraging an increase in smoking, showing a high death rate as a result. However, cigarette smoking does not prove fatal for everyone. There are many terminal diseases, such as breast cancer, brain cancer and bone cancer. The list goes on and on.

Every Sunday when my twin sister and I walked to see music professor J. Clyde Brandt and his wife, he always had a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes for me. I liked that. However, smoking never became a habit with me.

No one can tell a person to stop smoking. That remains something a person alone has to feel the will to do. All the suggestions on the market, I fear, are only hopeful.

I truly would like to see less cigarette smoking. I still contend, however, it remains one's own decision.

PAULA E. KEMPE

Cape Girardeau