Will anti-tobacco fanatics ever be satisfied? Their strategy of piecemeal prohibition has driven smokers from jobs, bars, clubs, restaurants, cafes, parks and bus stops. Now they threaten to harrass smokers in drugstores, tobacco shops, housing and on sidewalks.

Still, smoking and sales of tobacco-related products remain at least marginally legal, and so we have prohibition light, but perpetually getting heavier.

Can these piecemeal prohibitionists not be satisfied with having reduced the population of smokers to less than 20 percent? Enough already! From now on politicians who advocate extending smoking bans will never get my vote for any office, even if they are in a position to impeach Cheney/Bush — which they are not. Those politicians include the mayor and every supervisor with the exception of Aaron Peskin, who was sensitive enough to reject the parks smoking ban a year or two ago.

Reid Condit

San Francisco

Agency is ruining our lives

Come on, Ken (Ken Garcia, “Commission wagering its fate,” May 2.) The residents of San Francisco know the impact of the Entertainment Commission isn’t confined to the Broadway corridor.

As a resident of Lower Nob Hill for some 30 years, I can testify that the growing number of clubs sponsored by a municipal agency in one of the most densely residential neighborhoods in the nation is ruining our lives.

According to reviews, tourists who stay in this apartment and hotel district (on the National Registry of Historic Places) are likewise disappointed and outraged to find they cannot sleep.

The revisions to the police code that created the commission have significantly changed life in The City. Public drunkenness and associated public nuisances such as public urination, disturbances to residences, crime, and vandalism have become commonplace. Because the commission is in charge, we have no recourse when our homes and neighborhoods are trashed. In fact, noise disturbances no longer have any weight as violations needing correction.

In an experiment gone haywire, San Francisco dumped permit-enforcement mechanisms successfully used throughout the nation, giving the entertainment industry inside access and control of permitting. You have to wonder what kind of ties to the industry our representatives have.

Tom Ferriole

San Francisco

Promoting democracy

The Russian refusal to allow Kosovo to join the United Nations is a step backwards for the United States efforts to promote democracy in the worlds trouble spots. Once again Moscow has opted to promote trouble rather than a just solution to a global problem of hegemony and ethnic strife.

The United States has spent billions in the world in the past few years to promote human rights, democracy and promotion of peace. This latest attempt by Russia to forestall a peaceful resolution of independence and United Nations membership for the newly born country of Kosovo is an insult to these American efforts.

The American commitment to democracy and humanity is the highest in the world and it is time for other less-democratic nations to start supporting the United States’ efforts.

Kevin Beck

Las Vegas

Obama has not much to offer

Why can’t Obama offer anything but hope?

It is because he has nothing else to offer. Obama has done nothing for Illinois as its senator. That is why he doesn’t run on a record of achievements. Nothing there but hope.

If elected, Obama offers change, but not in the money sense. He calls a 30-cent reduction in federal gas taxes a gimmick. What’s his alternative? The bus? That’s going to cost me at least $2.50 daily and get me nowhere slowly. That’s a negative, my friends. He offers zero.

Is hope going to fill a gas tank? Is hope going to keep us from foreclosure? Obama has audacity to think we are going to buy his idea of hope.

Nothing from zero is no hope.

Paul Page

San Francisco

When politics, nudity collide

May 1 was my sixth arrest for public nudity to create a Free Body Culture political movement. Nudity is not a crime in California unless a person is lewd and San Francisco juries tend to be fair and reasonable.

This time, I was arrested for organizing a book signing for my new book, “Weapons of Mass Deception.” This is clearly a very political book that, besides advocating for a European-style FKK Free Body Culture movement, is highly critical of the San Francisco political machine. Now, clearly, I am being arrested to suppress these ideas.

Are these the people that you want to dominate the political sphere or your life?

George Davis

San Francisco

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