Golding Accurately Describes Anti-Tobacco Mood

To the editors:



David Golding accurately captures the “be-healthy-or-I’ll-kill-you” attitude of the antismoking movement and its antiseptic goal of a world without tobacco (“Life Kills,” comment, Sept. 12). Reformers, however, are not content only to outlaw smoking in bars and restaurants, to tax cigarettes exorbitantly, or to stigmatize smokers. They hope to eliminate it from the historical record.

I attended a showing of the recent documentary, “In the Shadow of the Moon,” chronicling the American space expeditions of the late 60s and early 70s. Afterwards the film’s director David Sington answered audience questions.

In response to one question he explained that the movie received a PG rather than a G rating because it contains two or three images of NASA employees smoking. The Motion Picture Association of America, after receiving threats of legislative action by antismoking groups and state attorneys general, now considers smoking in its rating system.

It is not surprising, giving their authoritarian nature that antismoking reformers might object to children seeing images of heavy-smoking leaders like Winston Churchill or Franklin Roosevelt, but would have no qualms about youngsters being exposed to photos of tobacco-hating Adolf Hitler.

Indeed, they might consider such images inspirational!



STEPHEN HELFER

Cambridge, Mass.

September 19, 2007



The writer is assistant at the Harvard Law School Library.