Now that Police Supt. Eddie Johnson has announced his retirement, it is time for President Donald Trump’s super cop to come forward to announce his plans for cleaning up crime in Chicago once and for all.
He should then have no problem getting the nomination from Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and the entire City Council will vote him in.
Bob Marszewski, Plainfield
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E-cigarettes are gateway to nicotine use
In response to your recent article, [“Vaping, e-cigarettes under fire at Illinois House committee hearing” Sept. 23]. If we’ve learned one thing from the decades-long battle to curb tobacco cigarette use, it’s that addiction to inhaled nicotine, especially when it starts young, can grab hold and take a lifetime to escape. And yet here we are in 2019, listening to Vicki Vasconcellos, president of the Smoke Free Alternatives Coalition of Illinois, bemoan the economic cost of restricting access to e-cigarettes without any reference to the negative long-term health impact these products might have on those who use them.
Although e-cigarettes are promoted as a tool for smoking cessation, research shows that among teens, e-cigarettes are a gateway to nicotine use and dependence. What’s more, a 2018 study published by Audrain-McGovern et al. in the journal Pediatrics, discovered that adolescents who use e-cigarettes are 3.63 times more likely to start using marijuana. Given that Illinois is poised to legalize recreational marijuana on Jan. 1, the urgency to understand the predictive role that e-cigarettes play in teen marijuana use has never been greater.
While restricting the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes to adults 18 and older is clearly necessary, these regulations are a weak barrier to teen access and use. A 2019 study of adolescents aged 15-17 in the American Journal of Health Promotion found that 31.1% purchased their e-cigarette devices from a store, vape shop or online.
At minimum, we owe it to teens and their guardians to provide them with research-based evidence on the risks associated with e-cigarettes/vaping. In a pilot study, published in Addictive Behaviors, researchers found that teens were highly receptive to receiving daily text messages that outlined the harms and risks associated with vaping. This pilot study found that teens who received such text messages were more likely to worry about e-cigarette risks and to believe that e-cigarette use would lead to addiction.
Erin Ellis, Wilmette
Guilty client
Don Adams, before gaining fame as Agent 86 Maxwell Smart, was a hoot as standup comic. One of his old bits from the ’60s foreshadows the Trump’s defense closing summation at his impeachment trial.
Defense attorney to jury:
“It’s easy for the prosecuting attorney to say all these terrible things to you about my client ... he’s got PROOF.”
Walt Zlotow, Glen Ellyn