When you see someone smoking, realize that you are currently paying $600 per month for their second-hand smoke.

That is what your insurance premiums and taxes are paying today (after my co-pay and their “volume discount” adjustment) for my COPD medication. I have never smoked but every day I pay the price of inhaling other people’s tobacco smoke (as a flight attendant) and so do you.

First it was the medical and personal (needless) costs of a smoker: throat cancer, then a stent in my artery, now labored, aching breathing.

The baby boomers are aging and our body’s repair systems are not as effective as they once were. Previous damage now is no longer controlled. We have better places to be spending money than on such easily prevented (and discouraged) damage done to bystanders.

Please stop encouraging smokers’ damaging second-hand smoke.

Kathie Cheney

Peachtree City, Ga.