ANOTHER No Smoking Day has arrived and despite protestations from the anti-smokers that they only want to help smokers, their real agenda is all too clear.

Take last week's assertion by Dr Martin Jarvis, of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, that the "cigarette is like a dirty syringe for taking the drug nicotine."

To liken smokers to heroin addicts, who are portrayed in advertisements as so desperate for a "fix" that they will mug old ladies for money, is an extraordinary attempt to demonise smokers and encourage hostility towards us.

Add these comments to their support for punitive tobacco taxes and their calls for bans on tobacco advertising and smoking in "public" places, and here, surely, is final proof that anti smokers care nothing for the interests of smokers, whatever they say on No Smoking Day.

JULIETTE WALLBRIDGE, Director of Information, Forest, Palace Street, London SW1.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.