JOHN COLLINS, Chief FInancial Officer RICK BOLOGNESE, Production Director •

EDITORIALS

No glamour left in cigarette smoking

Gruesome labels justified by toll cigarettes take in lives, health care costs.

There is a debate about whether the new warning labels on cigarette packs will discourage smoking. And, if they do cut the number of smokers, how significant will be the reduction?

After all, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which is requiring the labels as of next year, is dealing with addicts who already know smoking may kill them or ruin their health.

It is certain, however, the new

Blurnenthaltakes stand on Sudan

I am proud to be represented by a leader like U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

Last month. U.S. Sen. Mark Udall. D-Colo .. -SE<..£.S>\0 Sf"nt a letter to President Barack Obama. The letter urges the president to take steps to mit-

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igate the crisis occurring in the border regions of North . and South Sudan. In the; regions of Abyei, South KOT-dofan, and Blue Nile, attacks by the Sudanese army have ,' resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of inno-cent civilians, along with ' many casualties and wide- ' spread looting and destruc- I

lion. All of this comes as South

Sudan prepares to celebrate its independence as the \, world's nelVesl nation Sat-urday .

There were only 12 other labels will remove any tinge

of glamour still associated with smoking. Taking up half a side of a pack,

the labels show rotting teeth, diseased lungs, a corpse and a smoker's tracheotomy, among

other ghastly images . Even the FDA concedes

the impact of the labels may be small. It estimates they will cut the number of smokers by 213,000 within 'a year. There are some 40 million U.S. cigarette smokers, about 20 percent of the adult population. In countries with even more gruesome warning labels, smokers ask for the least appalling label or slip their cigarette pack into a case so they don't have to see it.

There is a strong argument that the labels are a case of government overreach - they are an attempt to damage the sales of a legal product. However, smoking is linked directly to the deaths of more than 400,000 Americans each year. The tobacco companies pick up none of the health costs of this toll. And their marketing has meant that the number of smokers has held steady in recent years.

There is a compelling financial, as well as humanitarian, public interest in reducing the number of smoking-related deaths. If the labels save even 10,000 lives by discouraging people from smoking, they will have achieved their purpose.

WHAT OTHERS SAY

Diaper check The outrage over the latest humiliating

airport security pat-down incident is understandable, but don't blame the screeners who searched an elderly woman.

The Transportation Security Administration stirred public wrath dgain after forcing a 9S-year-ol \ late-... ·,1ge cancer patient to rrmove her ad . diaper.

The incident was an embarraS$lng indigLity to the W0man, who.was traveling from Florida to MichigaAl to spend her last days with relatives.

But, what choice did screeners have? They were doing their jobs and fo ... procedures. It makes more sense to blame the masterminds of Sept. 11. They made it necessary to tighten airport security.

An apparently dying woman in a wheelchair may not fit the profile of a terrorist, but imagine the repercussions had screeners let down their guard and she turned out to be just that.

Just last week, an 8-year-old girl in Afghanistan was duped by the Taliban into carrying a remote-controlled bomb to a police post. The child was killed.

By no means, however, should the TSA / get a free pass. The agency has had more than its share of public-relations disasters, SUbsesting better training is needed for screel, -'rs.

The Philadelphia Inquirer

senators who co-signed the , letter. Blumenthal joined this bipartisan group from slates such as Arkansas. Massachusetts, Iowa and Oregon. The letter did not call for military actlon. but instead asks the U.S. government to use its power to leverage change in Sudan ,

I am proud of Blumenthal for his willingness to speak , out against tyrants like Omar AI-Bashir, who has

The vacant Pirelli building is being used to display Ikea advertiSing banners .

been murdering his own countrymen in Darfur for far too long.

Jim Messina New Haven

Editor"s 1I0tC; Jim i\1C'ssiTla is a Carl 1}.,'iU(<!n$ fellow with lil t> Savr Darfur Coalition and ch I.? GenOCIde ITHCfl!t'lllion Net-lL'ork ,

Lieberman wants to increase burdens of seniors U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a of eligibility for Ml?dicare to 67. and years. What does our esteemed s€na-

man who is financially secure .)nd to increase the premiums as well. tor propose we sacrifice in order to cannot decide on a polit ical affilia- I believe a large number of these pay these higher prrmium tion, is obviously out of touch with recipients are living on a fixed his senior citizen constituents regard- income. There has not been a cost louis Landino ing a bill he co-wrote to raise the age of living adjustment in the past two New Haven

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Tradition of 'demolition by neglect' continues in city

designed by M<lrcel Breuer in 1969 for the Armstrong tire company. In response to controversy. the baby was cut in half: The one-story tail, once used for manu facturing, was bobbed to provide parking; the fron-tice piece of executive offices facing busy Interstate 95 remaining, float-ing above a one-story void.

In the l<lst decade, that abandoned hulk has become progressively less and less 311ractive, and has been the host for any number of huge signs for various civic events or Ikea promo-tional efforts.

To what end docs the building remain standing? It is a perfectly via-ble structure, Clearly. the prominent degrading of a once proud and even sexily zes ly building responding to high-speed lraffic has become a sym-bol of sad uselessness.

It would seem that the condition of a building that grows shabbier by the moment - sitting at the crossro<lds of two interstate highways that soon will be accented by an exceptional gateway bridge - makes change inevitable. Either the remnant of the building should be brought back or it will be removed. It seems th.)t each passing day makes "demolition by neglect" increasingly probable.

Contrasting the full frontal promi-nence of the Pirelli building, Yale's 30-year-old Seeley-Mudd Library is inching toward uselessness largely unseen. It is in the middle of a site

W ITH the recent death of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. the con-cept of assisted suicide was

in the news briefly. It may come as a surprise to many people that assisted suicide for buildings is promoted by owners who have deemed them less than optimal for their plans .

These are buildings that are vacant and are either so unusable or undesir-able that their owners would rather see them degrade to the point of dan-ger than invest time or money bring-ing them into usefulness.

"Demo lition by neglect" is a devel-opmen t st rategy. It promotes a positive regard for a potential project by creating such a negativE'" con-notation for the exist-

ing building that (he public welcomes any-

DCO thing new. DICKINSON In the 1970s and '" ' .. ' -'" ". ,., early 1980s. the Davies

Mansion on Prospect Street in New Haven, designed by Henry Austin in 1868, was allowed by Yale University to decay to the point where it could be seen to be irretrievable, despite its history. However, Ihe historic pres-ervation community in Ne'" Haven

u louel and tl It. after several were entE: ained, Yale invested to save building by using it as the core for the Betts House, the Yale Center for thl'> Study , ;lobal-iz..ttion, the Yak 0ffi -:: .. of: terna-tional Affairs and the Yall:' Id Fel-

, lows Program. While Malley's and then J lacy's

department stores on Church Street went under, their vacant carcasses sat at one of the most strategic cor-ners in New Haven for the better part of a decade. making any re-use of those sHes a welcomed relief from the pall of neglect those twin bereft boxes cast on the rest of downtown. Thus, when Gateway Community College was proposed for the site, there was added fervor to make a bad situation better.

There may b<:> a prime example of "demolition by neglect" occurring now.

When Ikea came to Connecticut in 2004. it initially pr.oposed razing the so-called Pirelli building, which was

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for two new residential colleges for undergrads,

There are mJny architects and preservationists who have noted that the building could be recycled and integrated into the project. But, the library's quietly modern design, by local architects Roth & Moore. would be a fairly intense bU ZZ-kill to the ret-ro ambiance of Robert A.M. Stern's designs for the two colleges.

So. like Malley's and Macy's, the Seeley-Mudd Libra ry probably has become a dead building as it has nei-ther the hi story nor the antiquity of the Davies Mansion to inspire public outrage over its destruction . Like the pjrelli building, it has gone fallow and left in the architectural equivalent of a zombie state without the heartbeat of use.

"Demolition by neglect" is a far easier sell when the economy has hit the skids. There are few econom-ic engines to revive buildings that have lapsed into a Sla le of suspended animation_ As the Pire-Hi building becomes more and more of an eye· sore at a transportation nexus for the entire region, it's more likely that its perceived cultural and historic value will be eclipsed by the value of its absence.

Duo Dicklllson. QIl arc"m('ct. u'ritt's about arrhilt'fture and urban design for ehe Regis· ter, Wn'ce to him elt 9.. Bradtcv Road, Madi· 5012 06443, Email: