On January 2, 2007 we published a comment entitled “The confessions of a stupid smoker" which you can find in our archives. Our comments criticized a letter which had appeared in a Canadian newspaper. We are now told the letter to the newspaper was intended to be sarcastic. We are glad the newspaper letter was not sincerely intended, but it does seem so intended, thus we stand by that criticism while welcoming clarification presented here.
We recently received this letter from the lady whose letter appeared in the Calgary Sun last January:
“Dear Editor
My letter written on New years day 2007 [stored], was a sarcastic retort to anti-smoking groups in our city – province who would seek to deny me my right to smoke. Taken out of context I can see how [an] uni[n]formed group or writer could mistake this for my trying to blame everyone else for my harmful habit. The letter was written in an attempt to shame those anti-smoking groups who are total hypocrites and scream anti-smoking propaganda but stop short of asking for a total ban because they and every other person in Canada benefits from the huge taxes generated by smokers. Please go back a few issues in the Canadian Rag you refer to in your article and see which story I was commenting on. Also you might want to separate the letter I wrote from the actual comments written by your group’s writer. As it stands now my name is wrongfully listed as author of the whole piece.
Lori
Author ‘I am an Addict’ – The Calgary Sun"
We have edited the archived article to remove any possible misimpression that Lori wrote both the letter to the newspaper and the FORCES commentary about that letter. The FORCES commentary was written by a staff writer at the time who took Lori’s letter to the Calgary Sun as sincere rather than sarcastic. Her letter to the newspaper is straightforwardly self-immolating and makes no reference to any previous article or articles in that newspaper. Note also that a quit-line endorsement, evidently inserted by the Sun editors, appends Lori’s repentent missive. We are very glad to hear Lori tell us plainly that she is Anti-loathing rather than self-loathing. We believe her letter to the Calgary Sun did harm rather than the good she intended. We stand by our criticism of her letter to the newspaper but welcome her anti-Anti sentiments as expressed in her letter to FORCES and are pleased to present them here. Self-immolating smokers and calls for putting smokers into jail are politically correct and very ordinary realities in the sick upside-down world Anti is creating. This situation is ripe for both ridicule and rage, and we must be very clear, about that.
— The Editors of FORCES International
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