Letters for March 7, 2002

News & propaganda
Two issues ago, your newspaper included an insert placed by the Scientologists extolling the virtues of “volunteer ministers.” I find that having such an insert is offensive. It makes a person believe that you either support the organization that has placed it, or you have received money for its placement. If you allow Scientologists to place a fold-out ad, why not allow Buddhists, SubGeniuses, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Satanists and Catholics to have a turn as well? What’s happened to fair play in advertising?

Scientology is not a religion, nor is it an organization devoted to the betterment of humanity. It is a dangerous cult that brainwashes, defrauds its followers out of millions of dollars, attacks free speech, wants religious freedom only for itself and seeks to hide its dirty secrets through intimidation and deception.

After discovering these Scientologist ads, I question your journalistic integrity as well as your common sense. It seems to me that your “newspaper” has become another outlet of propaganda for whomever pays the most money. The Reno News & Review is no longer an alternative.

Jack Wood
Via e-mail

Editor’s note: Buddhists, SubGeniuses, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Satanists and Catholics are welcome to place advertisements or paid inserts in the Reno News & Review, as the Scientologists did.

Passive smoke vs. the Flat Earth Society
I’ve read a number of comments regarding the second-hand smoke issue. I can’t believe that, in the year 2002, there are people in Nevada still in denial over this issue. Even in Third World countries there is little or no dispute about second-hand smoke.

About the only people left who refuse to recognize the overwhelming science supporting the dangers of second-hand smoke are those who make money from tobacco and those misguided flat-earth types who’ve deluded themselves into believing that this is a personal rights issue and not a health issue.

Just as the tobacco industry unsuccessfully tried for years to compare smoking to drinking coffee and eating chocolate, the flat-earthers expect people to believe that “smelling someone’s body odor in line at the supermarket” is the same issue as being forced to inhale toxic chemicals from the cigarette of a smoker. This is total and absolute nonsense and a denial of reality.

The reality is that it’s no coincidence that Nevada annually is among the highest in rates of death and disease due to smoking. Public health experts from around the nation derisively refer to the Silver State as having “the lifestyles of the dead and dying.”

Currently, Nevada ranks right down there at the bottom of the pile with some of the weakest second-hand smoke laws in the nation. We’re on a par with tobacco plantation states like Kentucky and North Carolina. Perhaps, through the efforts of people like Kendall Stagg of the Nevada Tobacco Prevention Coalition, Nevada may some day lose its well-deserved reputation as the tobacco industry’s westernmost plantation.

Willie Edwards
Reno

Cahill’s ethics
Re “Cahill for Congress—again” [RN&R News, Feb. 21]:

As a longtime Democrat and resident of Northern Nevada, I am disheartened to hear that once again our impotent local Democratic Party can’t find an experienced, effective candidate to run for Congress. Once again we are going to be treated to another joke campaign, and once again we are going to be forced to vote for Gibbons or for nobody.

There is no way I will vote for Tierney Cahill if she again runs for Congress. If she can’t see that running a sham partisan campaign out of her classroom while on the taxpayer dime is of questionable ethics, then I certainly don’t want her in the halls of Congress where her votes would have an even greater impact on Nevadans. I don’t buy her baloney that she was teaching her kids only about the political “process,” either. She could have used other methods of teaching the political process without using her class as a propaganda forum. If she’s that blind, she shouldn’t be elected. We have enough problems right now with politicians of questionable ethics.

If she’s serious about running, she should quit her job or take a leave of absence.

Susan Nunes
Reno