Los Angeles Times

Commentary: Guns are the biggest public health threat kids face. Why aren’t we warning them?

Residents of the Villa Parke neighborhood of Pasadena gather for a candlelight vigil for Iran Moreno-Balvaneda, a 13- year-old who was killed by a stray bullet as he played video games inside his home in November 2021.

I still remember the raspy voice of the wizened cancer patient with the hole in her throat. So addicted to the poison that was killing her ‌— cigarettes ‌‌— she interspersed her words of warning about the dangers of smoking with taking puffs of a cigarette through her tracheostomy hole‌‌.

It was a short, disturbing public service video shown in my sixth grade classroom as part of an‌‌ anti‌-smoking campaign linked to a recently released U.S. surgeon general’s report, which for the first time officially linked smoking to cancer

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