14 FEBRUARY 2004, Page 30

Smoking guns

From Dave Johnson Sir The Trumpington woman you profiled (Cigarette Lady', 7 February) is a prime example of how tobacco use damages the brains of the people who use it. Indeed, that is how tobacco addicts its users. Ambient tobacco smoke is a witch's brew of carcinogens and poisons that kills hundreds of thousands of innocent people around the world every year. This is murder and genocide and anyone who endorses it is positively mad.

Every single one of us has a right to smoke-free air, this having been decided hundreds of years ago by common law. Let Trumpington and the other addicts (who die at the rate of five million each year, worldwide) vent their anger at the creeps that sold them a product that is addictive, defective and lethal when used as intended. The rest us will have our smoke-free air!

Dave Johnson

Arlington, Texas, USA