Editor,

Smoking: While I agree with you that raising the legal age for smoking cigarettes is unlikely to be effective, the implication of your editorial is that it’s no one’s business but the adult smokers.

In fact, it is every taxpayer’s business, since we are the ones who pay in the long run for those who choose to smoke.

We pay billions directly in medical expenses picked up by Medicaid and Medicare costs for heart disease, lung cancer and other smoking-related respiratory illnesses.

We also pay indirectly in lost productivity — that means less tax revenue locally, state-wide and federally.

Education is a wonderful thing, but kids think it can’t happen to them.

What they do notice is the price of a pack of cigarettes.

Making poison more expensive and using the extra revenue to pay for its effects has more impact.

Janie Pulsifer

Freeland