Dear Editor,
I was quite pleased to find the 'Daily Bulletin' on the internet. For a decade I read your paper while living on Majorca, drinking coffee in the morning in Can' Pastilla.
I was rather shocked to read about the upcoming war on smoking. For what it is worth, I've seen this war fought before, and here, in the State of California, it has been waged like no where else.
It does not work. The second a law is made like this, the battle is lost. Make it difficult to do something, and by pure nature people are drawn to it. Here, more teens smoke than ever before. Even with the cost of tobacco products being skyhigh, it hasn't seemed to solve anything.
I am not an advocate of smoking, but I do think people are going to do what they want regardless of any laws. In America, Proibition led to all manner of social problems. We never seem to learn from our past mistakes. People are responsible for their actions, although many refuse to acknowledge this and go to great extremes to place the blame on whatever or whomever they can.
I don't have any answers or solutions to the smoking issue, but I do know for a fact that neither price increases, taxes or any other method tried has been effective.
Make a product difficult to get, and even people who had no interest in it suddenly do.
Regulating products like cigarettes is an impossible thing to attempt. As long as they are manufactured, a portion of the public will buy.
It's all been tried here. It does not work.
Miss you, Majorca.... but I'll be seeing you again in the near future!
Sincerely,
By e-mail