Smoking on the big screen

Re “Smoking’s sinful sensuality in movies,” Opinion, May 19

Meghan Daum’s half-hearted attempt to defend smoking in movies doesn’t address what is going on in real life. Indeed, in the end, she gives in to the inevitability of surrender to the tyranny of antismoking zealots. About 45 million people smoke in the U.S. Smokers have been demonized as social outcasts, subjected to punishing taxes and held up to public hatred and ridicule by the behavior police. Yet they still exist.

So what’s the point in adding movies to the denial of reality? People from all walks of life smoke, some more than others. It would be a shame to make believe they don’t, as depicted in most television programming. But it is still permissible to show alcohol use on a regular basis. No problem, as long as the great evil of smoking is going on somewhere out there behind the lens.

DANIEL B. JEFFS

Apple Valley

*

Daum states that banning smoking from celebrity stills and films causes a loss of sensuality and mystery in the medium. This is hogwash. I work with high school students as a media specialist, and the overwhelming majority is repelled by such images. The students view such pictures as examples of addicted people who are sickening themselves and those around them.

If Daum had parents who died of smoking-related diseases, as I did, I doubt she could look at pictures of Paul Henreid or Humphrey Bogart smoking and find them alluring. Instead, she might think of how enlightened it is of the motion picture industry to help the health of society in this country and globally by banning such images.

CHRISTINE STREBEL

Camden, N.Y.