LETTERS: ALL THE CAUSES OF LUNG CANCERS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO SMOKING

To the editor:

Isn't it wonderful that they have suddenly found that dioxin causes lung cancer in thousands of people, and has for years? I'm certain the slanted researchers didn't take this into account in claiming that cigarette smoke is the cause of lung cancer.

Nor did they facet in what many coal-burning plants do to cause cancer -- nope, it's just cigarette smoke.

And what about the greater clouds of carbon monoxide from the ever-increasing number of cars and trucks that surround us daily, as an acknowledged caused of cancer?

As a two-pack-a-day smoker I have cancer -- it is skin cancer on my arms, ears and neck that have been exposed to too much sun -- but of course they figure it must be from smoke from my ever-puffing cigarettes.

Since I, a heavy smoker for 65 years, do not have lung cancer as they say I should, and none of my many smoking friends don't either, I am certain the research on cigarette smoke as the cause of lung cancer that is so publicized today is skewered just to find what the researchers want to find. It's slanted from the real truth!

Smoking may be part of the cause of lung cancer, just as dioxin, carbon monoxide and other things, and many yet to be discovered -- but it's not the major cause. I'll keep right on inhaling my 40 cigs a day and breathing nicely despite the distorted claims of so many slanted researchers.

Of course the unfair, ungodly and ever-increasing taxes on cigarettes cuts the number of smokers, despite the fact a cigarette relieves tension as even researchers admit.

But if suddenly no cigarettes would be allowed to be sold, I'm sure everyone's income taxes, state and city taxes would have to be raised substantially -- as well as supplemental income provided losses of jobs for thousands of tobacco farmers, thousands manufacturing cigarettes and transiting them to market to the sellers.

Think of the thousand of smokers like me that would have to go beyond our U.S. borders to get the cigarettes we rightfully demand. This is common in high cigarette tax states near low tax state. We'd sure give breathers a lot more carbon monoxide to inhale.

The so-called health bodies, newspapers, TVs and others who castigate cigarettes due to slanted and unfair researchers not only anger me -- but cut into all our trust of research in general.

CHARLES E. STIVER

Cape Girardeau