On April 14, 1994 the CEO’s of seven tobacco companies raised their right hands and swore to Congress and the American people that they did not believe nicotine was addictive.

Since then, public disclosure of once-secret industry documents has revealed not only that these men knew tobacco was addictive, but that their companies deliberately manipulated nicotine levels in cigarettes to hook smokers.

When will these tobacco executives be called to account for their perjury?

Cigarettes cause over 400,000 premature deaths a year.

The Republican-led Congress — which receives large contributions from the same tobacco interests that so hate the Clinton administration — has in four years called for no action whatever in this regard.

The same congressmen who protect the tobacco industry’s interests are the ones who claim to be so outraged by the President’s actions.

Lawmakers and the media have truly lost their minds if they consider an affair between consenting adults and lying about it in hopes of avoiding dragging everyone’s name through the mud to be more important than the addicting and killing of 400,000 Americans a year.

Alan L. Light

Iowa City