LETTERS: DON'T CRIMINALIZE TEEN-AGE SMOKING

To the editor:

Regarding the Jan. 24 article, "Teen tobacco law proposal stirs debate": If any of you think for a moment your are protecting teens against an evil, let me tell you that you are wrong. You are setting the stage for devastation among our teens. Your way of thinking defies all logic to my way of thinking.

This has been played out before. Although the substance was different (marijuana), the results will be the same.

As a teen-ager in the 1960s, I have "been there and done that." I have witnessed the devastation that this type of simple ordinance will cause. Believe it when I say you will open up a Pandora's box which will guarantee that our teen-agers today will be inmates tomorrow.

One simple thing always leads to a more complex judicial bureaucracy dictating more and tougher laws. A fine today, jail tomorrow, prison next year -- and on and on it escalates.

I don't believe for one second that our teens who choose to smoke cigarettes should become labeled as criminals overnight. I don't believe that any teen should have to suffer any consequences of a law or ordinance because of tobacco use or possession. Why to you want to turn a teen into a criminal? This ordinance, if passed, creates criminals.

What are the consequences of smoking or using tobacco? Sure, cigarettes may indeed someday cause bad health, even death. But in all probability the bad things that cigarettes cause will come when one is much older, after our teens have already gone through the best and happiest years of their lives. They should be able to look upward and onward and continue to march into the future unfettered and uncluttered -- even with that cigarette in their mouth. When they have matured somewhere down the road and later in life after getting their education, marrying and raising a family, many of them who smoke today won't smoke at some point. Many will quit sooner, some later, and others never will quit until the day they die.

It is the "some later" and "others never" who will become our next generation of prison inmates if such an ordinance becomes law. You had better think about the consequences of labeling our teens "criminals" by creating such laws that take away a teen's right to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

At least they have made their choice. At least they have been free to grow, to love, to work and to have families and teens of their own. At least they won't have to live a life of sneaking, peeping, hiding, lying, running, fighting, resisting or having an arrest record, probation record, jail record or prison record.

If you want criminals, then go ahead and create an ordinance that labels teen smokers as criminals. You get what you create.

MAXON ROADS

Jackson