Editor:

In response to Ross Solomon’s column (“Bar smoking ban has flawed logic,” Jan. 15), it is true that about 3,000 people die annually from lung cancer as a result of secondhand smoke. How convenient of you to purposefully mislead people by leaving out the about 46,000 people who die from heart disease because of secondhand smoke. These are non-smokers, mind you.

Furthermore, it is not “another example of whiny Utahns.” There are currently 23 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico that have passed similar laws banning smoking in public buildings as well as clubs. As for your writing summing up the 75 percent of the population of non-smokers as a bunch of babbling, burger-downing, gun-toting simpletons, it is at best offensive and at worst embarrassing for The Chronicle.

Tyler Soukup
Junior, Biology