Letters for Monday, July 9, 2012

• Big Island neighbors support Bill 2437 • Laws should be enforceable • Highway robbery • Westside sand crisis • Tell truth about EC pill, Planned Parenthood • Kilauea development is sickening

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Big Island neighbors support Bill 2437

The June 25 letter to the editor, “On smoking ban in parks,” warrants clearing the air. With respect to the writer, not God, the Constitution or past royalty have ever supported tobacco; it is not divine, in the Constitution or native to Hawai‘i.

In support of proposed Bill 2437, consider that smoking kills more people than alcohol, murders, AIDS, car crashes, illegal drugs and suicides combined, with more than 400,000 U.S. deaths annually; 50,000 from secondhand smoke.

The World Health Organization considers tobacco a global health pandemic with major human, environmental and economic ramifications.

In Hawai‘i, tobacco companies spend $42 million annually marketing their deadly products. More than 1,000 children each year become smokers.

Smoking costs Hawai‘i over half a billion dollars in annual health-care costs and lost productivity.

Studies have proven that smoke drift from a lit cigarette end releases larger, more poisonous molecules than those inhaled at the filter end. Secondhand smoke was found to be three times more toxic to tissue culture cells than mainstream smoke; children’s developing lungs are most vulnerable.

Cigarettes contain carcinogens that cause cancer. These chemicals are filtered through cellulose acetate, which is not biodegradable. The butts carelessly litter our islands and leach harmful chemicals into the fragile ecosystems.

Nearly 4 years ago, Big Island residents worked to pass our No Smoking in Parks and Beaches Law that we have today as a positive move towards building sustainable, healthier communities.

Your Big Island neighbors wish Kaua‘i wisdom in consideration of Bill 2437.

Juanito Moncada

Hilo

Laws should be enforceable

After watching the county council committee meeting on Bill 2437 regarding tobacco use in county parks, first off let me say I am not a smoker or a dipper and have no intention of being one. Though the intention of this “feel-good bill” is well received, laws should be made for enforceability as well.

 An adult baseball player who wants to use smokeless tobacco in a county park will also be in violation. How will the officer obtain the evidence?

Is smoking illegal? What this bill will do is make criminals out of smokers for doing something that is not illegal.

If the intent of this bill originally was to deter smoking on the beaches, how do you define the law as it relates to jurisdiction? Federal law supersedes state laws and state laws supersede county laws. This bill, if passed, will be a county law.

My point is the beach is under the state’s jurisdiction up to the high-water mark, or more commonly known as the vegetation line. If there is no state law banning smoking on beaches, then the county law would have no jurisdiction on the beach. So hypothetically a smoker could walk from the park to the beach and smoke?

After reading the testimonies and recommendations as described in the council meeting, it seems Bill 2437 is a bill devised to alter human behavior. I’m not sure how the voters of Kaua‘i will perceive an injustice on behavior modification. Without being stuck in a conundrum, a compromise in a resolution on awareness may be a more effective alternative.

Note: If litter is the problem as described by a few council members, then the litter laws should be upheld.

Steve M. Rapozo

Lihu‘e

Highway robbery

Is it just me, or is this new highway seeming to take forever to complete?

I sat at the Kilohana light the other day at noon for 12 minutes. I counted them. I waited through five signals before the long line of cars I was behind had enough time to get through the intersection.

When it was finally my turn, I snuck in just as the light was changing, but had to press my foot down on the accelerator to avoid getting clipped by a lead-footed driver heading the other direction. All I wanted to do was get home for a nice, quiet lunch before returning to work for the afternoon.  

I confess that I thought this section of the highway would have been done months ago.

I remember turning to my wife, as we sat in traffic a while back, saying, “Gee, honey, it sure looks like they’re just about done with this part. Won’t that be nice?” I could almost hear the birds singing and violins playing in the background.

Well, it’s now been five months since I made that comment and it still doesn’t seem like any progress has been made.

I mean, I know they’re working hard — at least the three or four construction workers I do see working are working hard. The others? What, are they on a permanent break? Where the heck is everybody?

Why isn’t the road finished? Are we being punished for something we did? Is there some diabolical Grand Poobah gleefully rubbing his hands together and chortling as he peers down on us in our misery? I mean, Eisenhower had the interstate system completed in less time than it’s taken to do a couple of miles. Sheesh.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m mad.

And you all should be mad, too.

If you’re not mad, I want you to get mad.

And I want you to do something.

I want all of you to get up out of your chairs.

I want you to get up right now, and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”

Steven McMacken

Lihu‘e

Westside sand crisis

Aloha. I moved to Kaua‘i on Dec. 4, 1992, as a carpenter working to help rebuild the homes of the great people who were just devastated by Hurricane ‘Iniki.

The first day I was here I went to surf at Intersections. I loved the beautiful white sand beach that I was told was “17 miles long and longest in the islands, maybe the world!”

Now I work at PMRF and live in Kekaha and can’t believe that there is no more white sand beach and waves are washing over the highway, splashing cars, throwing rocks onto the roadway.

This is a very dangerous situation because the ocean waves are undermining the highway, and soon the lifeguard tower and shrimp farm will have to move because there isn’t any sand.

The state needs to come up with a plan to re-sand our beach or we won’t have a beach to enjoy.

I am amazed that my fellow Kekaha neighbors haven’t been loading the mayor’s and congressmen’s and governor’s email with pleas for help.

So here is the first one that I ever wrote to anyone who I hope will listen: Help save our beaches before they are gone and the only thing there will be big ugly rocks, that while helping to stabilize the road, aren’t all that fun to play or sit on. They are great for fishing, but in Hawai‘i, Kaua‘i in particular, the beaches are our life’s blood. Let’s not let them disappear!

Jon Hare

Kekaha

Tell truth about EC pill, Planned Parenthood

As a concerned citizen of Kaua‘i, I would like to bring some honesty to the discussion with Planned Parenthood of Kaua‘i. They will admit one moment they offer the EC pill, which is the Emergency Contraceptive pill, or RU 486, and the next minute say they don’t offer abortions on Kaua‘i. See www.prochoice.org/pubs_research/publications/downloads/about_abortion/facts_about_mifepristone.pdf.

I wish Planned Parenthood would just be honest and tell the truth. Don’t use the soft language of EC. It is the abortion pill.  

No one is against women’s health or contraceptives or the planet as YWCA signs indicated. Yet there are folks who are concerned about our keiki, our families and about precious babies. This is not a political issue, simply concerned ‘ohana of Kaua‘i.

What is so offensive about a baby? Let’s stop accepting lies as truth, Kaua‘i. We are better than that.

Chris Metcalf

Lihu‘e

Kilauea development is sickening

If you are looking for a good reason to become sick to your stomach, you might like to know that yet one more of the treasured places in Hawai‘i, Kilauea Town on Kaua‘i, buckled under the pressure from developers.

The Kaua‘i Planning Commission recently passed the Hunt Corporation’s permits for a more than 40,000-square-foot shopping center directly in the center of town with barely a peep from residents or the Kilauea Neighborhood Association.

The small, inefficient little road into town from the highway already struggles mightily to accommodate 100,000 cars yearly as they travel to the Kilauea Lighthouse, and now promises to turn into a barely moving nightmare because an alternate road is at least 5 to 10 years away. Additionally, the shopping center will undoubtedly lead to development of housing on the huge nearby open area.

It is difficult to discern whether it was apathy, work commitments, lack of vision or just the deadening feeling of powerlessness that caused citizens to avoid the planning meeting in droves, but those who live nearby will have plenty of opportunity to contemplate it as they sit in traffic around the entrance to Kilauea Town for the next decade or so.

Will we ever stop treating the land as a commodity?

David Dinner

Hanalei