Editor, Manteca Bulletin,

Loved your parodies in your column, (“Cigarettes first soda next” — Dennis Wyatt, April 21, 2015).  Who would have thought the hippies of yesterday would take office just to force their ideals of righteousness through laws down your throat? So ironic from a culture that said “live and let live.”  

As you stated, it is just a stepping stone to more controls through law. Today it is cigarettes.  Tomorrow it is soda.  Next week the cause is red meat by the supporters of PETA. The next question: Who will take the time and energy to go throw all the cigarettes into the harbor?  If no one stands up for personal choices, they will keep going after them. 

I am glad that some cigarette laws were created. Growing up in a house where my parents never even gave it a second thought to light a cigarette in the car while as a child I had to sit right next to them or after they finished a meal. I would be sitting there still eating. And of course that didn’t matter. Being bumped with a hot glowing cherry of a cigarette wasn’t fun either as they pulled me in close supposedly for my safety in some instances. I welcomed the cigarette laws stopping people from smoking in common closed spaces.

 I hated the fact it had to come to legislation to help protect people like myself. I would rather that knowledge of the dangers would control people’s actions. Unfortunately that does not. Both my kids grew up in a time that it is was preached and legislated that smoking is a bad thing. There is no solution to issues such as these. The job of legislators is to legislate. Unfortunately there are a lot of ignorant legislators that will create laws to control the ignorance of the population.   

Bobby Stanley

Manteca