'Killing Off Your Readership' 

Editor:

Thank you for personalizing the tragic local loss of the pandemic by listing victims in your May 20th issue ("In Memorium"). 

At the same time, we were shocked and dismayed that on page 4 an advertisement exhorting "Eureka" to "Make it Luckies (Strikes)!"  appears in that same issue.

The long epidemic of disease and death caused by the use of tobacco would be enough to have filled up pages of many papers across the country in the years before, during and long after the current pandemic. The ad's bland, innocuous and ultimately gratuitous warning that "Cigarette Smoke Contains Carbon Monoxide," conveniently combined with a link for free "Mobile Coupons," is the final slap in the face to those who have witnessed (or experienced) tobacco's gruesome lethality.

Surely there are alternate sources of advertising income for your otherwise fine publication that are not inherently intent on literally killing off your readership!

Daniel Escajeda, Mckinleyville