Letters

Editor,

I have conflicted feelings about smoking bans ("Belmont to be first U.S. city to ban all smoking” in the Nov. 15 edition). I have long been an opponent of drug prohibition (all the way back to Prohibition, which didn’t work either). I believe that the war on drugs is the second biggest problem the United States faces (after the war on terror) and it could be solved very easily by legalizing drugs and ending the war. (I do not, however, also propose the legalization of terrorism — that particular problem is a lot trickier.)

If the war on drugs were to include a war on tobacco, I would anticipate a whole new market for biker gangs, still more overcrowding of U.S. prisons, and all the other harmful consequences that follow from drug prohibition. Yet, cigarettes are different. Cigarette smokers don’t just inhale toxic smoke that harms their own health, they also pollute the air with that same smoke, and harm other people’s health. The right to use a drug should not include the right to force other people to use it as well, against their will.

And of course, cigarettes, a legal drug, kill far more people than all the illegal drugs combined. If there were only one drug that truly deserved to be banned, it would be tobacco.

David Palter

Toronto, Canada

Save the Earth

Editor,

I am writing this letter to inform you how United States is not part of Kyoto Protocol, made on Feb. 16, 2006. It is an international agreement to address climate disruption, which tries to prevent from global warming going further.

More than 140 countries have ratified and 38 have legally required reducing greenhouse gas. By 2012, average of 5.2 percent of greenhouse gas would be reduced compared to 1990. If the U.S. has ratified, it would have been 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Our country produces 25 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide. That is more than India, China and Japan’s carbon dioxide combined. If global warming keeps on going, large areas would be uninhabitable, massive food and water shortage would occur, which sparks widespread migrations and wars.

I would like to encourage your readers to help save the Earth. They can reduce greenhouse gas by using compact fluorescent light bulbs. This can lower an energy bill and keep 700 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the air. Using a refrigerator with Energy Star label also helps because it uses 15 percent less energy. Buying bio-diesel or hybrid cars, riding bikes and trains and carpooling also help.

Aya Yoshida

San Mateo

Stop child labor

Editor,

Approximately 250 million children worldwide are engaged in child labor. The majority, 70 percent, of these innocent children, work in agriculture. This means that they are working long hours in hazardous conditions for very little pay. These kids often get extremely sick from inhaling toxic pesticides. Girls are at an even higher risk of abuse. 1.8 million girls are forced into prostitution or slavery and many others work as domestic servants. These children work in horrible conditions because their families suffer from extreme poverty. A vast majority of them are sold into slavery.

Children being deprived of education, much less a childhood, is definitely not acceptable. As citizens of the world, it is our duty to do something about it. By not taking action, we are as responsible as the child traffickers themselves for this major world issue. As consumers of good that are made using child labor, we must put pressure on companies to use fair trade goods. When a company is Fair Trade certified, it means that the farmers they are buying from are paying their workers fairly ad are not using child labor. Also, the farmers are not getting ripped off because they are not selling their goods through a middleman. M&M Mars and Starbucks are two companies that don’t use Fair Trade. Starbucks has Fair Trade coffee beans, but not actual brewed coffee that everyone goes there for.

I hope that you will help to make the public aware of what is going on behind the scenes of some of these companies.

Tanya Singh

San Mateo