McVeigh's sentence shows
vengeance was the message

I was saddened to see your June 14 editorial, "Death for McVeigh." Your paper usually has higher values.

What possible good comes from revenge, ever? "An eye for an eye means everybody is blind," the Rev. Martin Luther King reminded us.

What a powerful example it might have been to show mercy to McVeigh, despite his heinous crime and its ghastly consequences. An example of mercy would have brought some meaning to a meaningless act of violence.

The nation had a chance to set another standard of morality, not so much for the sake of McVeigh, who appears cursed by hate and vengeance, but for others in hate-filled groups and the children of those who hate, while still developing a conscience.

If we teach our children that vengeance is the way to respond to injustice, we have no future. We will simply live the past over and over and over again. Misery without end.

The Rev. Andrew J. Weaver
United Methodist Minister
Kaneohe
(Via the Internet)

Cigarettes, not illegal drugs,
are the real public enemy

It's not hard to see why the war on drugs doesn't include tobacco. Philip Morris, makers of Marlboro, pays $56.5 million to the government every day.

The Hawaii State Department of Education reports that, in 1996, "an alarming 34 percent of Hawaii high school students were regular tobacco smokers compared to 22 percent in 1980, revealing a shocking increase in adolescents beginning a long-term addiction and life-shortening habit."

Numerous national studies indicate tobacco use precedes other drug use.

The Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University reported in 1994 that an adult who smoked as a child is three times more likely to use marijuana and four times more likely to use cocaine than one who did not smoke as a child.

The 1995 National Household Survey on Drug Abuse stated that youths 12-17 years old who smoked tobacco were eight times as likely to use illicit drugs and 11 times as likely to drink heavily as compared to non-smokers.

It's time our war on drugs finally began to focus on tobacco, America's most serious health threat.

Graham Ellis
Pahoa, Hawaii

Story on runaway teen
is unfair to N. Marianas

Your June 6 story, "Exploited in Saipan sex bar, teen finds haven here," merits comment. The article is nothing more than a glorification of three wrongs:

1) A Filipina teen who's learned how to employ the art of lying to get out of her country, 2) a Pinoy teen whose papers were approved by her corrupt government and 3) a Pinoy teen who was wronged by a Filipino couple, who must have fled the island before appropriate federal agencies got to them.

Notice that it had nothing to do with the indigenous people of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands? What of our voices in instances where our reputation as a people is permanently ruined? Definitely, the article is riddled with deficits in fairness, justice and an understanding of the issues through our lenses.

Finally, if your newspaper really wants to make a difference about sex exploitation, try Manila's 3 million or so young girls who exchange their firm bodies for cash, nightly. How about an expose of their own politicians, who have molested girls in posh apartments by paying them enough money to silence them?

John S. DelRosario Jr.
Saipan
Commonwealth of the Northern
Mariana Islands

Lawsuit in Kealoha case
may be good idea after all

Sharon Kamalii is understandably upset that her nephew, Gabriel Kealoha, is currently in the Youth Correctional Facility (Letters, June 12). She claims that city Prosecutor Peter Carlisle has orchestrated a media campaign against Kealoha to "elevate his (Carlisle's) personal ambitions to obtain SHOPO securely in his pocket...(that) this case has always been political and racist...(and) when the true story is told by Gabriel, Carlisle's career will be finished, and he'll be on the first rowboat back to New Jersey!"

A Family Court judge sentenced Kealoha, not Carlisle. Even if Carlisle had erred in the pursuit of justice, suggesting that he would no longer be able to practice law in Hawaii, that would have smacked of the same kind of racism that Kamalii is so bitter about.

I hope Kamalii encourages her family to file suit in civil court. Should those proceedings occur, I trust that she will support the exposure of all evidence, allowing the public to evaluate the propriety of actions of everyone involved, including Peter Carlisle, the police, Family Court and Gabriel Kealoha.

Gerald de Heer
(Via the Internet)

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