THE PUBLIC MANDATE

	The national smoking problem will not be solved by America's
attorneys.  The Liggett Tobacco Group settlement merely establishes a
massive profit sharing arrangement between the tobacco industry,
health care, government, and the legal service industry.  It limits
liability.  This partnership guarantees that smokers will be created
and exploited for generations to come.
	Too many nice people suffer from nicotine addiction.  Present and
future nicotine addicts deserve your help.
	A real quality of life approach to abating the national smoking
problem follows.  Do you identify with the rationale in THE PUBLIC
MANDATE (below)?  Please forward it or your personal thoughts to your
Senators and Congressional Representatives.  It will take millions of
responses to enable this.  Your individual response will be the one
that makes it happen.
	  You can fax, e-mail, or snail-mail.  Contact instructions for
locating the fax numbers, e-mail and mail addresses for your Senators
and Congressional Representatives follow THE PUBLIC MANDATE. 
	Print out this entire article and post it to any public bulletin board
you have access to.
	Also, please e-mail me at mic...@voicenet.com.  The first word of
your text should be your "State".  Support pending, I will compile a
database of your e-mail addresses by State.  And a summary of each
Official's performance on this issue.  Support pending, I will
broadcast the performance summaries fifteen days before their
reelection by e-mail within each State.
	Volunteer help, small financial contributors, and Senators and
Congressional Representatives can access me by direct mail at Mike
Placentra, 4009 Ventnor Ave / Suite #1, Atlantic City, NJ 08401.
Volunteers within each state will be needed.

The following article is released to the public domain for reprint or
broadcast on any medium on the condition that it is not altered. 

THE PUBLIC MANDATE - 
	The new FDA regulation of the sale of cigarettes to people under 26 is
too lenient.  Smokers of all ages want to live out their lives as
nonsmokers.  Cigarette retailers keep cigarettes prominent in our
culture.  They have had 25 years to revise their business plan.
	Restricting cigarette sales by age is proving counterproductive.
However well intentioned, it causes youth to associate smoking with
maturity and adulthood.  There are so many smokers under 18.  They
were supposed to be over 18 to buy.
	Smokers, as a group, get no respect.  Most of their political
complaints arise out of their feeling intimidated.  In the rare
context of compassion and respect, it is shocking how many smokers
say, on their own initiative, that they would support a ban on
cigarettes.
	National experience with alcohol prohibition rules out a cigarette
ban.  But a logical, proven solution to the smoking problem is
apparent.  Remove cigarettes from retail stores.  Move them to
distribution centers that resemble methadone clinics.  Structure the
distribution centers so nobody benefits from strong cigarette sales.
Smokers could register and buy small consumer quantities of cigarettes
cheaper than from any wannabe black market supplier.
	Like heroine, cigarettes should be kept out of retail stores.  Out of
our openly endorsed culture.  Out of the general economy.  We would
see far less youth mistaking smoking for a mature activity.
	All smokers try to break the addiction.  There is no justification for
putting retail cigarettes in front of them every time they buy
groceries or cosmetics or prescription drugs.
	Should we concern ourselves about lost retail profits?  There has been
nearly a hundred percent attrition in the retail industry since those
grave warnings first showed up on every pack of cigarettes in the
early Seventies.  Most cigarette retailers today started selling in
spite of those warnings.  We can not pass this addictive carcinogen
with no nutritional value to future generations on behalf of today's
retailers.  To put it more bluntly, if the business won't survive
without cigarette traffic, put it out of its misery.
	This is what it will take to significantly reduce the number of new
nicotine addicts.  To empower significantly more people to break the
addiction.  And to significantly reduce suffering and loss of life
from smoking.


CONTACT INSTRUCTIONS -
To locate your Congressional Representative, copy the following
address from here and paste it to 'GoTo' in your Web browser:
gopher://una.hh.lib.umich.edu:70/00/socsci/poliscilaw/uslegi/congdir/hou97

To locate your Senator, copy the following address from here and paste
it to 'GoTo' in your Web browser:
gopher://una.hh.lib.umich.edu:70/00/socsci/poliscilaw/uslegi/congdir/sen97

These are Library of Congress addresses.  I don't know if there is a
way for tobacco companies or some retail group to sabotage or jam
these sites to hamper our campaign.  But as a precaution, I have
copied the lists and contact information to a disk.  I will test the
sites periodically.  If they go out of service, I will post the lists
under several newsgroups containing the word "politics".  Use your
newsgroup software to 'Edit'  'Find' a newsgroup containing the word
"politics".  Retrieve all the articles, and look for articles
containing the words "Congress" and "Senate".  The lists will be
there.  And, perhaps your librarian can help you find contact
information also.  Make sure your communication gets through!

Thank you from the heart and the breath of smokers struggling with
addiction.  And from the people who care about them.