This is not intended to be a defense for my son and grandson; they need none.

I quite agree that we are responsible for our own decisions. However, essential to a good decision is knowing all the facts, and they are lacking in most people's decisions to take drugs or to smoke cigarettes.

As EEE points out, smokers tried to quit again and again, and most did, once they found out that continuing to smoke would lead to an early death; once they had all the facts, including those that the tobacco industry hid, preferring that we not know the results of their own research that told them of addiction and disease.

Pharmaceutical companies are no less duplicitous. And congress, as the movie industry was before them, is no less greedy, hiding its acceptance of lobbyist-offerings behind the ruse of campaign fund-raising.

Each time I see an actor who I know doesn't smoke, with a cigarette hanging out of his or her mouth on screen, I'm reminded that today's teenage audience is still a target of the tobacco industry.

Telling a doctor to treat football injury pain with opioids, the pharmacutical companies' aim is every bit as pernicious, tagging many, including children, for addiction.

Then telling them, sometime during the 1980's," give them all they want", resulted in today's dilemma. Sullivan's linking mere want to what they now need to our evolving culture of trickle-down-greed is right on.

The richer Bill Gates gets, the poorer the poor get. The poorer a man feels, the more depressed he becomes, the more sedation he craves. In too many cases, he doesn't work to earn money to buy anything, let alone useless crap He scroungees the money for drugs.

Watch and imitate education of our young, if the above continues, will result in a pyramid no thoughtful person wants to see.

In addition, as an afterthought, genetic disposition differs in all people. There are genes for addiction. Those of us who have repeatedly used painkillers without feeling the pull of addiction often are helped in our decision making by good genes.

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