To the editor:

I take issue with the headline, “Bars, not smokers, punished by ban.” The city’s smoking ban is not a punishment! It is a welcome relief to those of us who have a health problem and who cannot breathe your smoke. You are free to smoke, just not in my face or where I will be choked on it. This is a health issue.

You can’t have your cell phone on in the hospital, you can’t have an animal in an eating establishment, but you are free to have cell phones and pets where they will do no damage. Those are not “punishment” issues.

People suffer because you force them to choose to inhale your smoke or not enter a given establishment. Please don’t play the victim here. This ban is not to punish anyone; it is so the rest of us can breathe and live in a healthy atmosphere.

Carrol Mills,

Lawrence