Whenever my daughter and I walk by someone who is smoking we look at each other, sigh and, given no other option, hold our breath as we pass by.

We do that because we know all about the number of deadly ingredients found in cigarette smoke. We don’t blame the smoker. Chances are the smoker knows, too.

Unfortunately, the smoker has developed an addiction to the nicotine that is a natural part of the tobacco plant. What smokers might not know is that the tobacco companies that make the cigarettes are not only aware of how addictive nicotine is, but go out of their way to make it even more addictive than it already is.

It’s been proven that they add forms of ammonia to the “recipe” to break down the nicotine molecule to its’ base form, so the smoker is free-basing nicotine.

In order for the smoker to maintain this designed addiction, they are exposing themselves to many, many chemicals that are known to cause early death in a large percentage of smokers.

The sad truth is that the smoker is not the only victim of these deadly toxins. Only 15 percent of the smoke inhaled stays in the lungs. The other 85 percent is exhaled into the air, so as other people, including nonsmokers, walk through the cloud, they too are breathing the more than 60 cancer causing chemicals present in secondhand smoke.

Nonsmokers have already made the choice to live a healthier life style and should expect a certain level of security knowing they can walk around in public places, or go to work, without the concern of being poisoned.

There are some protective factors already in place.

Ten years after the “smoke-free bars” law went into effect, the “smoke-free cars with minors” law started.

This law, which has been in effect since the beginning of 2008, prohibits smoking in a motor vehicle when a minor (17 years old and under) is also in the car. A violation is punishable by a fine of up to $100.

The city of Lakeport has an ordinance that prohibits smoking “within the boundaries of any city park, playground, or recreation center” (cmc 8.44.020). A violation of this law is an infraction.

The Lake County Fair Board has assigned certain areas within the fairgrounds that are off limits to smokers in an effort to protect nonsmokers, especially children, from the damaging effects of secondhand smoke.

California is definitely moving in the right direction, but is the state doing enough?

To help you decide, you might be interested to know that for every eight smokers that die of a smoking related death, one non-smoker does too. That’s because there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.

Labeled as a Class “A” carcinogen, the very moment secondhand smoke is inhaled, it starts causing damage to cells and tissue inside the body. Over a long period of time the effect can be very serious and in some cases deadly.

The EPA, the FDA and the U.S. Surgeon General have all agreed that nonsmokers need protection from being forced to breathe tainted air.

Another fact that most people might not be aware of is that the more a young person breathes secondhand smoke the more likely they are to become smokers. With each breath, they are getting nicotine into their bloodstream and sooner or later they too could become addicted to it.

There is also very strong proof that young girls suffer permanent damage to their reproductive system after inhaling secondhand smoke.

Evidence shows an increase in chances that, when older, they might have difficulty getting pregnant, have an increased chance of having miscarriages and giving birth to low-weight babies.

Living in America, people have the right to choose whether or not to smoke. Do they have the right to put nonsmokers in danger?  

We have the right to breathe clean air. Since there are more nonsmokers than there are smokers and 48 million of them are former smokers, it would make sense to me that there should be laws and rules in place to protect nonsmokers, not because they are the majority, but because of the high risk being exposed to secondhand smoke presents.

So when my daughter and I walk down the street we should not have to choose to breathe or not to breathe.

As community a member, I support ordinances and policies that limit exposure to secondhand smoke while outdoors – especially in public parks, outdoor events (such as the Lake County Fair), and areas outside a local business we would like to visit.

You have an opportunity to join efforts to protect the health of our community.

If you would like more information about the health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke, or would like to be involved in local efforts to protect the health of our community, call the Lake County Tobacco Education Program, a program of Lake Family Resource Center at 707-262-1379, Extension 113.

For help to quit smoking, call the California Smokers Helpline at 800-NO-BUTTS.

Glenn Koeppel lives in Lucerne, Calif.

In response to a letter regarding Measure D in another publication on Thursday, April 26, I believe marijuana has medicinal value to cancer patients who have appetite loss and certainly there must be other medicinal uses.

I am for complete decriminalization and legalization of marijuana. I find it to be much less harmful than alcohol.

In other words, I do not feel it's the evil weed, and if people of legal age want to smoke, it I believe they should be allowed to.

I do believe, however that the growing of medical marijuana and hemp for other purposes needs a much harder look before implementation of a growing plan.

In response to the writer's question, “Why is the wine industry welcomed with open arms and embraced while marijuana is condemned as the evil weed with its roots firmly planted in hell?”

This is very easy to answer on several planes. First of all, you are exaggerating. I'm sure most of the people, including people from the Farm Bureau, do not believe that marijuana is is an evil weed with its roots firmly planted in hell. However, I'm sure many people who believe in decriminalizing it want to see strict regulation of growing it as they do with all crops.

Unlike marijuana, the wine industry has a longstanding tradition of bringing culture and tourism to the areas where it's produced.

Over the last 150 years that the wine industry has been in California it has been examined and scrutinized, and farming practices have been improved. The grapevine stays firmly implanted in the soil 12 months of the year, thereby stabilizing the soil – marijuana does not. Everything to do with the wine industry is visible and above board.

Before a winery or vineyard goes in, the owner is required to make improvements and go through an extensive permit process before even being allowed to sink the first shovel. In other words the neighborhood roads are not going to be ruined by winery trucks passing through the neighborhood. Home values will go up when a new winery comes to the area.

Marijuana, on the other hand, is totally unregulated. Home values will plummet when marijuana plots go into a neighborhood.

I've read Measure D. I encourage others to read it (you can see it below).

Measure D was written by marijuana growers and provides no regulation of marijuana growing whatsoever. Nowhere in the measure is there any wording regulating drainage, pesticides or herbicides. There is no wording regulating the erosion control or the dead skunk stench that the plants gives off.

Measure D, under the guise of being a regulatory document, cleverly opens up nearly every neighborhood for growing it.

Measure D allows marijuana growers to grow in agricultural districts, agricultural preserve districts, single-family residential zones, suburban reserve districts and timberland preserve districts.

Self-regulation simply does not work. The expression of “the fox watching the hen house” applies here. It's like having Wall Street govern the banking industry. It's simply ludicrous.

There is nothing in Measure D that says a grower has to be a resident of Lake County. This will bring people from all over the state to grab land for their plots for marijuana. This will raise holy hell with our watershed. The supply for medical marijuana will far exceed the demand for medical marijuana.

However, people will still need to sell their marijuana. What happens to the excess marijuana? I'm sure the states around us will feel the impact whether they like it or not. This is what it's all about: MONEY! Pure and simple. If we just take care of the patients in California we won’t need to grow so much marijuana. That’s why we voted to legalize medicinal marijuana – California patients.

Look around you. Lake County is a big bowl. Much of the land for growing things is already used for growing things in flat areas where runoff isn't as damaging. Nearly everything in Lake County that grows agriculturally maintains its rootstock throughout the winter and holds the soil in place. Vineyards on hillsides are terraced to prevent erosion.

When growers grow marijuana they will be using the watershed to grow it. They will strip the land of trees to allow for sunlight and build grow boxes to level out a portion of the hillside.

Don't believe that? These photographs show two probable plots that have already been developed under everyone's noses. One comes complete with a flat spot for a possible illegal guardhouse RV. Read Measure D so you can judge for yourself its vagueness.

One grower has already produced a crop of nearly 50 plants last year viewable on Google Earth and you can clearly see how the land has been clear-cut of precious madrone, manzanita and other native plants that hold the hillside in place and prevent it from washing down to Clear Lake. It is bare of vegetation. The chainsaws ran for weeks. My eyes watered from the skunk smell through two months of summer.

The newest addition of a probable grow site was clear cut, graded without retaining walls, fences built and rock hauled in all without permits. They were red tagged. Now they are applying for permits after the fact.

If you think that, because it's going to be grown on the hillsides away from you, and therefore out of your area, trust me, in the winter it will come to your neighborhood. It will come in the form of clay and mud and pesticides and herbicides. Your lakeshore property will receive extra nutrients to help those invasive weeds become even thicker.

The growers work on red-tagged property on weekends in direct violation of the law. At 9:10 a.m. on Saturday Dry Gulch Trucking delivered water to the site above us as shown in the photo below. Code enforcement stated firmly this was an illegal activity.

Measure D will be the scourge of Lake County. Measure D makes it allowable to grow in nearly any vacant area.

Budget cutbacks have already gutted the Code Enforcement Department in Lake County. It's hard enough already for them to keep track of the code violations and they simply can't keep up with it. This will be exploited to the nth degree.

Last year I put $1,300 into graveling the fire road that leads to my home. The heavy equipment, four-wheel-drive vehicles and increased traffic to the grow sites a few hundred feet from my house have beat the gravel down into the road and this summer will be just another dusty summer for us.

Will the grower share in the cost of my loss? There's nothing in Measure D asking him to improve the neighborhood. There is nothing in Measure D telling him to repair his damage.

Kill Measure D in June. Kill it DEAD. Send a message. Not because it's about marijuana and its medicinal value, but because it's a poorly constructed document that will ruin the environment and the beauty of Lake County. It will demolish the value of your homes. It will make your life very uneasy. Share this letter with your acquaintances.

If you see trucks filling up water tanks with lake water at suspicious times and places, it's illegal. Get a license number or photo.

Finding an answer is not going to be easy. But let our county supervisors do what we elected them to do and over the course of time find an answer.

There is a citizens group that would like your support called Citizens to Protect Lake County-No on Measure D. It has the support of the Lake County Deputy Sheriffs Association, Lake County Farm Bureau, Lake County Chamber of Commerce, Sierra Club, Clear Lake Riviera HOA, Buckingham HOA, Kelseyville Business Association with many more to come soon. Contact for the organization is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Greg Cornish lives in Nice, Calif.

We’ve all heard the stories. High-schooler gets bullied by text messages from school mates. Kids harassing each other over Facebook pages. Employers “Googling” potential employees.

Ever since the dawn of popular social networking around 10 years ago, cyber issues have affected our children.

Parents, business people, and school teachers/administrators have struggled to find effective ways to deal with these social networking challenges.

And more recently, as more and more adults and businesses have jumped on the social networking band wagon, the sins of cyber life have graduated from the school yard to our backyards and our workplaces.

The more tech-savvy we as a society become, the more social networking has become a gray area of proverbial backyard justice.

It’s not only become a way for cyber predators to gain access to their victims, it’s become a way for victims to retaliate against their harassers.

Take three cases that have made national and international news recently.

In once case, comedian Jon Lovitz tweeted the names and pictures of three high schoolers who committed racist vandalism at his friend’s home.

In another case, German Olympian Ariane Friedrich posted on Facebook the name and email address of a man who had sent her a lewd photo of his genitals.

And in a third case, movie director Spike Lee used Twitter to help spread the address of an elderly couple as that of the man who shot and killed an unarmed teen. The couple, who had nothing to do with the shooting, had to leave their home in fear for their lives.

And then you have the professional arena, with businesses finding new ways almost daily to use social networking to gain information about existing and potential employees.

Sure, businesses use social networking for background checks, marketing and advertising – that’s old news.

What’s potentially more interesting (and possibly insidious) is the recent trend of some employers asking applicants for Facebook passwords, or sites such as LinkedIn tracking members’ usage in order to assist recruiters in evaluating the efficiency of an applicant’s professional networking skills.

There’s no question that social networking can be a valuable tool when used appropriately. Clearly social networking is a growing trend that’s not going anywhere, and its results can be powerful and effective.

But since it’s an unprecedented developing phenomenon, lawmakers and enforcement authorities have little guidance on how to manage it and are scrambling trying to figure out how exactly to deal with the fallout of wrongful use.

Right or wrong? You decide. But get used to it. There’s no going back, so parents, teachers and community leaders, add it to the list of important issues to be discussed with your children.

Like it or not, social networking is here to stay, and because there are no real rules of play yet, it’s like the wild wild west all over again.

No punches are pulled, and everything we do and/or say can find its way to the Internet. And once it does, it’s permanent.

So be prepared for the world (including your boss and your grandma) to know about it.

Annette Lee is a Lake County, Calif., business owner, community college instructor and proud parent.

April is Alcohol Awareness Month, which offers the opportunity for awareness of the consequential severity of driving under the influence.

Frequently, no matter what area one lives, we turn on the television or pick up the newspaper to hear or read about another DUI tragedy.

These tragedies are not accidents, but rather they are the result of an individual’s irresponsible decision to drink and drive.

In a matter of a few seconds, that irresponsible decision can change the lives of many forever.

Every day, innocent people get hurt by the carelessness of DUI drivers.

The sad fact is that it’s only a matter of time until the next alcohol-fueled tragedy happens on a road, because too many people won’t admit they had too much to drink or arrogantly believe they can drive anyway.

Last year almost 800 people were killed and nearly 30,000 injured in California as a result of drunken driving crashes.

These catastrophes didn’t have to happen. Drunk driving is completely preventable, yet it continues to claim more than 10,000 lives each year across America.  

Each day you and I share the road with two million people who have been convicted of drunk driving three times or more. More than 400,000 people were found guilty five times or more. On an average, these folks drive drunk 80 times before their first arrest.  

These repeat offenders have an oblivious disregard for human life. Remorse is absent. A change of behavior is absent. Sound judgment is absent. Understanding consequences is absent. They are clearly a proven danger to public safety, not only in the community they reside, but wherever they travel.

Most DUI drivers convince themselves that their destructive action was an accident. If they convince themselves it was an accident, then their guilt is minimized.  

Some of these drivers may utter the words “I’m sorry,” but those words are merely an instant, built-in mechanism that is used when they are caught.  

There could never be enough “I’m sorries” to take away the pain and emptiness that is in the hearts of a family and friends who have lost their loved one or have watched their love one suffer at the hands of a DUI driver.

The DUI driver is not the one left behind to pick up the pieces to a family's life. Their lives go on, as they will never feel the suffering that is felt by their victims.

Drunken driving is inexcusable and against the law. Negligent DUI drivers who are responsible for the death or injury of an innocent person must be made to face the consequences of their selfish act.  

Driving under the influence effects everyone. The impact of the consequences of DUI is pervasive and knows no boundaries.

People tend to think, “It can’t happen to me.” Yet anyone, in any community, including here is Lake County, may become the victim of a DUI tragedy at any time.

Statistics reveal that one in every three people will be involved in a drunken driving crash during their lives.

No one is immune from this hideous crime. It is time this violence be given the seriousness it deserves.  
        
Despite all of the sorrow we deal with each day across the nation due to DUIs, there is still hope.

Hope that one day people will understand the seriousness of this crime.

Hope that one day, more people will become accountable for their actions.

Hope that there will be no more drunken driving tragedies because of prevention.  

Hope that no one will ever have to cope with a lifetime of pain due to injuries sustained in a drunken driving crash.

Hope that all parents will know the importance of talking with their kids about alcohol, and that teens will learn the dangers that alcohol can bring to their young lives, before a tragedy occurs.

Hope is a valuable and powerful resource. We can all do our part to share in the hope that will help change the culture of this violent crime.

Judy Thein is founder of Team DUI and a member of the city council for the city of Clearlake, Calif.

Here in Lake County and all over the state, volunteers are circulating petitions to put genetically modified food – or GMO – labeling on the California ballot.

If the considerable body of scientific evidence pointing to health risks associated with GMO consumption is not sufficient motivation for you to sign, then please, do it to restore free market capitalism.

Do it to end the Corporate Agriculture Welfare State.

Eighty percent of all our GMO crops go directly to animal feed, mostly factory-farmed livestock and poultry. An industry which, like GMO crops themselves, is heavily subsidized by American taxpayers.

GMO crops would not be able to compete economically in a real free market (i.e., without government welfare checks) because the cost of producing the GMO end-product exceeds the value of that product on the market.

Yes, it costs more to plant, grow and harvest a bushel of GMO soy or corn than that bushel is worth, per the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). Taxpayers have been making up the difference.

Therefore, GMO crops are welfare crops.

Search the prices of GMO soy verses non-GMO soy and organic soy. You will find that, per CBOT, non-GMO soy sells for 10 to 30 percent more than what is paid for GMO soy per bushel and organic soy brings in at least twice the price of GMO soy.

American taxpayers have been carrying Big Ag on our backs for too long already. GMO labeling will correct many wrongs currently plaguing the Wall-Street-rigged US farming system.

And by the way, one fear-tactic you will hear from the Biotech lobbying industry is that GMO labeling would drive up the cost of food. Not true.

And here’s why:

While it may be true that a majority of processed foods on the average American supermarket shelf today contain GMO ingredients, the percentage of GMO is usually low, and usually from vegetable oil ingredients.

In every case where giant food manufacturers sell overseas, they are already making an equivalent product without GMOs, to avoid overseas GMO labeling laws.

Ergo, a vanilla wafer made for the US market contains GMO ingredients, while the same company’s vanilla wafer made for export is made without GMO veggie oil.

When GMO labeling passes here in the USA (and since no company wants to admit to GMO ingredients) it will be a relatively pain-free process for those food manufacturers to simply start using GMO-free vegetable oil in all their products, not just the ones they export to other countries.

Almost overnight (and well before any labeling deadline approaches) the 70 to 80 percent of processed foods currently using GMO veggie oil will no longer contain any GMO ingredients.

One industry that will be significantly impacted by GMO labeling is factory-farmed livestock and poultry, which is already the source of many health problems.

Even without E. coli and other outbreaks, standard operating procedures – such as daily hormone and antibiotic supplements – in these factory farms negatively impact our health. We are long overdue for a serious overhaul of that entire industry.

I am a meat and poultry eater myself, but I regard the health risks of eating factory-farmed food to be unacceptable. Also unacceptable: huge amounts of tax money needed to subsidize increased health costs resulting from chronic diseases associated with the factory-farmed meat that most Americans eat daily.

If GMO labeling can provide the impetus to clean up our factory farm situation, that will be an added benefit of passing this bill here in California.

Deb Baumann lives in Upper Lake, Calif.

TNR stands for “trap/neuter/release,” which is a program where unowned cats, whether feral (wild) or simply “strays” are trapped, spayed or neutered, vaccinated for rabies, and released back into the environment where they were found.

For years Lake County, like most parts of the country, has had a “trap and euthanize” policy which has completely failed to resolve our cat overpopulation problem.  

As has been mentioned in previous articles, Lake County kills five times more cats per capita than any other county in the state. This is a shameful and embarrassing statistic.

Our cat problem has a negative impact on real estate values and the quality of life for our citizens. It generates strife between neighbors, poses health risks to people and their pets, and shocks visitors and prospective homebuyers coming to the area.

There are two types of cats the Lake County Animal Control shelter deals with: truly feral cats which fear humans and cannot be safely handled, and friendly strays which are lost or abandoned by their owners.

They all have one thing in common: most of them are being fed, either intentionally or not, by humans.

Yes, these cats can and do hunt for food, but most of them rely on food provided by well-meaning people who don’t want to see them starve.  

Surveys show that 10 to 20 percent of households feed cats they don’t own. Because of this most experts are calling such unowned cats “community cats.” They are free-roaming cats, some too feral to touch, some very friendly, being fed by people who don’t consider themselves the “owners” but who feed them daily.

Because these people don’t consider themselves owners, they don’t feel responsible to have the cats spayed and neutered, and in many cases the sheer number of cats being fed makes it financially impossible for them to do so.  

If you take a feral cat to the shelter it will almost certainly die there.  It is hard to make a case that they are somehow better off being brought to the shelter where they will sit huddled in a small cage, stressed and frightened, exposed to contagious viruses, for the mandatory three days before they are euthanized.  

The modern TNR program stops the reproductive cycle and gets them back to where they came from within 24 hours. They can live out their lives and the population will decline over time due to natural attrition.

Opponents of TNR usually bring up the negative impact that cats have on wildlife – primarily song birds.

My reply to that is we’ve given “trap and kill” programs a chance for the last 30 plus years and it hasn’t worked. The cats are still there, the birds are still being killed. Do you want to just keep doing what we’ve been doing for the next 30 years?

Others say TNR does not work. Experts in the field say that if managed properly and given enough time, it does work.

Successful TNR programs have reduced euthanasia rates from 30 to 70 percent in Florida, New Hampshire, New Jersey, San Diego, North Carolina, Connecticut and Utah.

Still others say TNR is too expensive.

When you add up all the direct and indirect costs of the current “trap and kill” programs it costs the taxpayers about $100 per cat. When you consider how much the county has already spent on a program that hasn’t worked, doesn’t it make sense to try something else?

In our opinion the main reason “trap and kill” has not worked and will never work is that the public will not stand for it.

People who have been feeding stray cats so they won’t starve are certainly not going to participate in a cat extermination program.

In order to get our cat population problem under control we are going to need the help and cooperation of the public, which means finding an alternative to euthanasia.

In January of 2012 local veterinarians created the “Catsnip” program which offers a limited number of free spay and neuter surgeries for Community Cats for one year.  After that time we expect the county to step up with a plan.

We would like to see the county fund a minimum two year TNR pilot program where vouchers would be issued for spay/neuter of community cats.

Lake County Animal Care and Control recently installed a spay/neuter facility for impounded/adopted dogs and cats. They are currently only performing surgery three days a week.

A county-funded TNR program would allow them to utilize their facility full-time. Vouchers could also be used at the SPCA spay/neuter facility on Highway 29, as well as any private practice willing to accept them.

What can you do to help?  

1. If you are feeding community cats and you can’t afford to spay/neuter contact one of the Catsnip coordinators listed below to get on the waiting list for the Catsnip Free Spay/Neuter Program.  Remember, only truly unowned cats qualify for this program.

2. If you can afford $50 to $65 to spay/neuter the community cat you are already feeding, DO IT! You will be doing yourself and your neighbors a favor. Spayed and neutered cats tend to keep newcomers away so your colony will not keep increasing in size. The SPCA and several private veterinary clinics around the lake offer spay/neuter for Community Cats at a significantly discounted rate. Contact Vicki Chamberlin for more information.

3. Kitten season is here. If you are feeding a community cat who has kittens, trap them ASAP so they can be socialized and hopefully adopted.

4. If you own a barn or warehouse in need of rodent control contact Lake County Animal Care and Control. There is no safer, more effective means of rodent control than a couple of hunting cats.

5. Microchip your cats! Many of the friendly cats brought to Animal Care and Control are owned but never recovered because there is no way to identify them. If you can, keep your cats indoors or inside an escape-proof yard. Studies have shown that confined cats live five times longer on average than free roaming cats.    

6. Attend the next Animal Control Advisory Board meeting scheduled for Monday, March 26, at 1 p.m. at the shelter where this subject will be on the agenda.

7. Let your Supervisor know you support TNR.

8. Volunteer to help! The Catsnip program needs help with trapping and transporting cats.

Catsnip coordinators:

Vicki Chamberlin, Lakeport, 707-263-3958, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Kathy Langlais, Animal Coalition of Lake County, Clearlake, 707-995-0552
Erica Bergstrom, Middletown, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Susan A. Cannon, DVM, and Chris S. Holmes, DVM, work at Wasson Memorial Veterinary Clinic in Lakeport, Calif. Their guest commentary is endorsed by Main Street Veterinary Clinic, Clearlake Veterinary Clinic, Animal Hospital of Lake County and Middletown Animal Hospital.