LETTERS

STEPPING ON BIG TOBACCO

"No one has profited more than the government from the sale of tobacco. It's time it kicked the habit and improved its moral position." DOUG JOHNSON Lebanon, N.H.

The human mind cannot fathom the $368.5 billion that tobacco companies will have to pay out in compensation if the proposed settlement takes place [NATION, June 30]. The public naturally assumes this huge amount is enough money to take care of tobacco's deadly legacy. However, the tobacco industry is not likely to make concessions in a deal that would lose it money. This is not the first time the industry has sat at the negotiating table with those concerned about public health. In the past, the tobacco companies have found ways to overcome restrictions like the Surgeon General's warnings and the ban on TV ads. The public should be cautious about this settlement. Health advocates must remember that the devil is in the details. ELIZABETH FORNER Grand Rapids, Mich.

What has happened to personal responsibility in the U.S.? Must we as a society blame every mistake we make on someone else? As an ex-smoker, I realize the health risks involved in smoking and would never dream of asking for compensation for something that is a personal choice. I am a Generation Xer who tried smoking at 15. And even at that age I was intelligent enough to realize that it is not a safe habit. A Marlboro Man or a cartoon camel had little to do with my smoking. Young people will always experiment--it is the nature of being young. Do people actually believe a cigarette will make them look like the Marlboro Man? I think not. JULIE BYRD Akron, Ohio

What right do we have to complain about teenage smoking when we are signing the paycheck for the best salesman the cigarette industry has ever had? As anyone who has ever been a teenager knows, the Surgeon General's message on a pack of cigarettes is a challenge, not a disincentive. It gives the teenager an opportunity to display his machismo without having to consider the consequences until the dim and distant future. BEN HARNEY Spokane, Wash.

I was elated at the empowerment of the FDA to regulate tobacco and the nicotine content of cigarettes. But, sadly, this is a step that should have been taken 50 years ago, when Bogie and Bacall first made smoking the chic way to die. SARAH ANASTASIA OLYNYK, age 14 Shaker Heights, Ohio

There's no reason to celebrate the demise of the Marlboro Man. He's simply living abroad. I've just returned from Guatemala, where an artful TV ad begins with a nighttime storm, stampeding cattle, restless horses and men saddling up to enact a fantasy of real men's work. At the end, machismo served and calm restored, the handsome hero lights up...his Marlboro. Why am I not surprised? Developing nations have long served as dumping grounds for everything from banned pesticides to Dalkon Shields. We've got to invent mechanisms for ensuring that multinational corporations maintain the same environmental and social ethics abroad that they are forced to practice at home. ILA L. ABERNATHY, Coordinator St. Michael's Guatemala Project Tucson, Ariz.

Nicotine calms the nerves and stiffens the backbone. Cigarettes in our World War II K rations helped win the war. As the holder of a battlefield commission in World War II, I know. With a major portion of our cigarettes now sent overseas, one could worry about what would happen in the event of another war. Nicotine wins wars. We must not permit a nicotine gap! DAVID MANZELLA Barrington, R.I.

Fourteen years ago, I was a new graduate nurse employed in a Veterans Administration medical center. I thought it was unconscionable for the hospital to distribute scrip for the patients to obtain free cigarettes in the hospital commissary while nurses administered chemotherapy to cancer patients who smoked. Patients were grotesquely disfigured by the surgical removal of facial cancers or had legs amputated because of vascular disease caused by cigarette addiction. Many of these veterans told me their first cigarettes were courtesy of the military while they were in the service. How ironic that war did not maim or kill these men but that cigarettes did and will. NORA MARTIN VETTO Phoenix, Ariz.

If the tobacco companies finally do pay out those millions of dollars for the sicknesses and deaths they have caused, won't they simply deduct such payments from income as a cost of doing business? Any reduction in their taxes will have to be made up somewhere else. Guess who will end up paying: people like you and me who never touch a cigarette. BILL BLAIR Tulsa, Okla.

HONG KONG'S NEW MASTER

What Britain's handover of Hong Kong to China really symbolizes [SPECIAL REPORT, June 30] is the end of Western hypocrisy. While the freedom to choose is the foundation of Western civilization, Hong Kong was taken in a very undemocratic way from China and was held for more than 150 years. And while Hong Kong is being given to communist rule, it is being done because the people of Hong Kong, the ethnic Chinese who are the inhabitants of this tiny island, want it to happen. True, the 99-year lease of the island was set to expire in 1997. However, everybody has sensed the feeling on the streets of Hong Kong for a long time: the people have wanted their little island, the child kidnapped against its will, to return home to China. NIRAJ PATEL Sugar Land, Texas

The Chinese communists wrote their "Atlas of Shame" to document colonial exploitation, but why don't they record the brutal human-rights violations that have occurred in China since they took over?

Their rampant slaughtering and torturing drove millions, including my parents, to flee to Hong Kong. Sure, the British took Hong Kong unjustly. But without them, Hong Kong wouldn't have a prosperous free-enterprise economy, a free society governed by law, a clean and efficient government. So now that the glorious Union Jack has been lowered for the last time in beautiful Hong Kong, I want to thank the British for all they've done to make Hong Kong what it is today. BENJAMIN KONG, age 15 Arcadia, Calif.

THE EMOTIONS OF HOUSES

Lance Morrow's "A Mystic of Houses" was a hypnotic, enticingly eerie piece of writing [ESSAY, June 30]. He echoed a secret notion of mine that houses, if lived in for any significant period of time, absorb rather than deflect the emotions of their inhabitants. The feeling I had after reading the article was unsettling. I hope to see more of Morrow's work in the future. Or...maybe not. SUSAN L. MOYLAND Des Moines, Iowa

CAN WE APOLOGIZE FOR SLAVERY?

Jack E. White's opinion that today's blacks should receive reparations for their ancestors' enslavement is the type of rhetoric that fuels racism [DIVIDING LINE, June 30]. White America has already paid reparations for slavery back in 1861 to 1865 in the form of the Civil War. Roughly 3% of white American males died freeing the slaves, with thousands more maimed and wounded. This fact always seems to be overlooked. TOM KUS Chicago

I agree 100% with White's article. As a black woman, I was pleased that the President apologized for slavery. However, I was appalled that he felt reparations were not in order because slavery happened so many years ago. His response shows me that black suffering is not recognized as suffering. Why else would the Japanese and Jews be eligible for reparations and not blacks in America? Our ordeal in America lasted longer, and I believe it was far worse in lasting effects. This is not to trivialize the suffering of the Japanese and Jews. Both were horrendous crimes against humanity. This matter is not closed because Bill Clinton apologized. In fact, this is just the beginning. SHARIMA A. JOHNSON New York City

I fail to see why the U.S. government should apologize for slavery when slavery was introduced in this country 157 years before we existed as a nation. We did away with slavery with one of the bloodiest conflicts in history, and the Federal Government won freedom for the slaves. Let the English, Spanish and French apologize to White and give him the 40 acres and the mule. They allowed slaves to be transported to these shores long before the U.S. was founded. WILLIAM C. FURST Fort Pierce, Fla.

White's message is worrisome. When White and leaders in the black community come to the realization that money and more government are not the solution to their every ill, they will be well on their way to throwing off the shackles of slavery. Almost every race and every society that has ever graced this planet has tasted the evil of slavery in one form or another. It is not a Caucasian legacy but a human legacy. Man's inhumanity to man knows no color. White's essay is a cruel ruse that serves only to obfuscate the real issues facing America's blacks. It panders to those in the black community who tell their youth that the American Dream can never be theirs without help from the government, that white America doesn't care about their problems. Sometimes the shackles you can't see are the hardest to remove. CRAWFORD LEE SEALS Atlanta