Letter: Sympathetic to Shinnecock billboards on Sunrise Hwy.
The Shinnecock Indian Nation has begun operating one of a pair of electronic billboards along Sunrise Highway in Hampton Bays. Credit: John Roca
As a young resident of Long Island, I recognize both our natural beauty and our history tainted with injustice, from slavery to de facto segregation to our mistreatment of native peoples.
The Shinnecock Nation has built two electronic billboards on tribal land to raise revenue for its community [“Shinnecocks vow fight to keep billboards,” News, May 29].
Economic development is limited on reservations. Instead of worrying about aesthetic implications of building billboards on the side of Sunrise Highway, we should instead consider several hundred years of injustice and trauma dealt to native peoples, and allow them to support themselves in a way that is far less imposing than the tactics used to steal their land in the first place.
Erin Zipman,
Stony Brook
Albany should ban flavored e-cigarettes
Despite reports of smoking rates going down, tobacco companies are now hooking kids on other tobacco products by enticing them with cherry, strawberry, grape, chocolate, mint chocolate chip, honey berry, mango and sour apple flavors. The numbers are scary. More than 27 percent of high school students in New York in 2018 were using use e-cigarettes, according to the state Department of Health.
Research from 2013-14 published by the American Medical Association found that that 81 percent of youth who had ever used e-cigarettes started with a flavored product. This isn’t surprising; tobacco companies have a long history of developing and marketing flavored tobacco products to attract kids. Flavors improve the taste and reduce the harshness of tobacco products, making them easier for beginners to try. These are nothing more than training wheels for getting kids hooked on nicotine.
I urge our State Senate and Assembly to stand up for kids and ban the sale of flavored e-cigarettes before the legislative session adjourns in a few weeks [“NY poised to ban flavored e-cigarettes,” News, May 21]. Remove those nicotine training wheels. Kids’ lives and health hang in the balance.
Patricia Bishop-Kelly,
Huntington Station
Editor’s note: The writer is a member of the American Cancer Society board of advisers for Long Island.
