Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

Letters to the editor, July 4, 2010
Raise smoking age to 21

A rude awakening has occurred when our statistics showed an increase in teen smoking in Maine ("Smoking rates rise again for teenagers," June 20). Congratulations to those who have worked so hard to achieve lowering teen smoking, but an obvious end is not here.

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Katelyn McKay, 17, smokes near the Preble Street Teen Center. McKay says she started illegally smoking in sixth grade to fit in. A reader says raising the legal age to 21 would benefit younger smokers, too.

Kat Franchino/Staff Photographer

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It is evident that quitting (or never starting) is not self-directed. I'm not sure why, but it appears that because of the age factor, the rebound effect, peer pressure, etc., that teen smoking is a long-standing issue. Let's raise the smoking age to 21.

There was great debate when MADD got together after several teens died of alcohol-induced auto accidents and ultimately raised the drinking age to 21. This is the same matter except for a slower death. A few other states have done it. It virtually eliminates teen smoking.

Any 19- to 20-year-old not legally allowed to smoke would be a nonsmoker. We would have a great record of very low teen smoking. Let's raise that smoking age.

I have worked diligently against smoking for over 25 years at Maine Medical Center .

The final result shows that a great percentage of health care is due primarily or secondarily to the results of smoking. If those teens were not legally allowed to smoke, the effects on our health care costs would drop dramatically in the next generation.

We would eliminate that tender age of influence, two years of temptation. My example to them was after I witnessed an 18-year-old at a local high school buying 10 packs of cigarettes after school and going to his car and tossing them to the other students in the car, who appeared to be under 18.

The store is not liable, and the driver had no accountability at the time, but I witnessed it.

The girl in the article who stated her reason to start was peer pressure would not have that reason anymore. Let's help our youth by taking our most effective, cost-saving step and say smoking is legal only at age 21.

Rita Bradbury

Hollis

Route 1 stop sign a rude act by Camden

Vacationing in Camden, I have some understanding of traffic bottlenecks in Wiscasset. Here in Camden, we have the most bizarre intersection/traffic control situation ever. For those not familiar with it, let me elaborate.

It is not bad enough that downtown Camden has pedestrian crosswalks about every 60 feet on Route 1, but they have installed this peculiar traffic control system on the north edge of town, as if they want to make it easy to leave town southbound but near impossible to enter town northbound.

At the intersection of Route 1 north and Union Street, they have erected a stop sign right in the middle of the street facing northbound traffic, with a sign noting that oncoming and intersecting traffic does not stop.

The intersecting traffic from Union Street (not even a state or county highway) would be classified as tertiary traffic at best. More likely would be only one-fourth as important as Route 1 northbound traffic.

I can think of numerous reasons not to do this and not one reason why one should do this. This weird traffic controls system: 1) wastes gas, 2) pollutes the environment, 3) wears out cars and trucks with unnecessary idling and 4) just generally annoys the majority of the traveling public.

On a late-morning walk, I went by this odd intersection and noted cars and trucks backed up nearly a fifth of a mile. And the summer travelers are not even here yet!

Would someone please explain to this hillbilly from North Carolina just why the Maine Department of Transportation allows Camden to bottleneck highway traffic in favor of a relatively unimportant city street?

Dr. Thomas M. Kelemen-Beatty

Asheville, N.C.

Columnist wrong to defend Nestle's use of Maine aquifers

In reference to Tony Payne's column in the Telegram June 20 ("Property rights issue swamps water debate"), wherein he extols the virtues of corporations, may I quote from his "Alliance for Maine's Future" website home page: "Democracy is like a muscle -- it works best when exercised." How true this statement is.

Just ask the Kennebunk Board of Selectmen regarding their opinion of Central Maine Power, now a subsidiary of a Spanish multinational corporation, about how a corporation treats a small community with their corporate political influence and endless financial resources.

Ask the residents of Wells, when Nestle Waters launched a $1 million slick advertising campaign to convince voters on a new regulatory ordinance that would have permitted large scale groundwater extraction, funding a campaign barrage of television, radio and newspaper advertisements. The Wells voters were intelligent enough to become educated in the real issues and overwhelmingly voted "no" in last November's referendum.

This is democracy in action! Yes, local citizens are beginning to flex their constitutional muscles when confronted with a corporation that comes into their community, two years in advance of a public announcement, and attempts to lay the groundwork with quiet meetings with local town and municipal officials. Small communities do not need a corporate-funded political action committee telling them what a great job corporations are doing for us.

We are already seeing the effects of that in the Gulf oil spill disaster. Can BP turn around and solve the country's worst environmental disaster simply with the continued promise of jobs and capital investment?

Only local citizens, who are educated in the issues, participate in their local governments and display an entrepreneurial spirit, will turn around our state's economy -- not the corporations.

Bob Walter

Kennebunk

Tony Payne's June 20 column in support of Nestle's activities in Maine is rife with false assumptions and errors. Here are three of the worst:

1) Far from being beneficial in any but the most limited of senses, large-scale commercial water-bottling is unnecessary, wasteful and, in its processes alone, harmful.

It's unnecessary because most of us have potable water sources already available to us -- water that is vastly cheaper, better monitored and even in some cases simply better than bottled water. It's wasteful because all of the steps needed to extract it, bottle it and get it to us use energy that might better be expended elsewhere. And it's harmful because each of those steps pollutes in varying degrees -- in, for example, the gases emitted in truck transport and the millions of plastic bottles that end up as refuse.

2) Large-scale extraction of water from Maine's aquifers, in numbers of gallons now figured in the trillions, is unprecedented and therefore, by its very nature, unsafe. Payne's misleading figures notwithstanding, the science doesn't yet exist that can tell us the full effects of massive and continuous aquifer draw-downs.

What is documented is the ongoing despoliation of the planet at the hands of big corporate enterprises who put profit above safety and lie about it. The monstrous BP oil-gushing calamity in the Gulf of Mexico is but the latest example.

3) Nestle richly deserves criticism not because it's Swiss-based but because of what that location reveals about its size. It's huge, and its size yields it money to pour into advertising, into taking opponents to court and into support for lobbyists, legislators and legislation.

The truth is that Nestle is putting Maine on the map in international battles for control of the world's water, and when little Maine towns like Newfield, Shapleigh and Wells refuse to grant Nestle access to their share of it, they're not participating in any sinister anti-business movement to "make what's yours ours."

They are simply working to ground these matters in fact, fairness and proper perspective.

Virginia Woodwell

West Newfield