Proof that people would go down the legal track is that there are cheap illegal cigarettes on the streets but most people pay the exorbitant price for the legal product. Home brew is cheap but most people don't drink it - they like what the bar sells.
The same with tobacco - you can grow your own, very few ever do, they just grit their teeth and buy the stuff in the shop.
So Rob, your two wrongs don't make a right does not stack up as an argument that is a go-er.
GARTH SCOWN
Whanganui
Covid times in the US
In an Associated Press (AP) piece in the Chronicle (World, August 18) we are informed that Dr Scott Atlas is a new member of the Trump Administration Coronavirus Task Force and this is only because Dr Scott agrees with President Trump that children should return to school.
AP infers that no qualified person would call for children to return to school at this time. AP doesn't mention the head of the Centers For Disease Control (CDC) recently told Congress "it's in the public health best interest of K-12 students to get back to face-to-face learning. There's significant health consequences of the school closure."
AP says Dr Atlas is "falsely claiming" that children have "near 'zero risk'", while ignoring that Dr Scott is talking about healthy children with no pre-existing health issues. As he said, "The hospitalisation rate for influenza according to the CDC is much greater than from Covid-19 for children." And the AP doesn't mention that the CDC says "Covid-19 poses low risk to school-aged children."
This is next to the AP article about US Democrats claiming that President Trump is trying to damage the US Postal Service (USPS) and removing post-boxes to somehow influence the election.
The USPS has been removing post-boxes by the thousands for years, especially during the Obama Administration, and has been in need of reform for a long time ... The photos Democrats refer to of post-box removal now, are of regular post-box replacement.
In that article, and one about problems facing an unprepared mail-in voting system for the upcoming election, AP informs us President Trump is making a "false claim" that the mail-in voting will lead to greater voter fraud and undermine the election.
The many cases of voter fraud already experienced in places prepared for mail-in voting, inability to check that the votes are from the voters they claim to be, thousands of errors on the voting rolls, etc, all don't matter to the AP.
Examples like the couple who received voter application forms for each of them and their cat ... show that worries over voting fraud are real. [Abridged]
K A BENFELL
Gonville
