Smoke alarm

The imprisonment of a man for letting a child smoke (your report, 16 October) is a perversion of the law. The legal charge was of "exposing a child in a manner likely to cause suffering or injury to health". Nobody disputes that smoking 40 a day for 40 years produces a strong possibility, though no more than that, of killing. Even then, the risk drops dramatically if the smoking stops.

I challenge anybody involved in the case to produce any evidence that the kid, who was clearly perfectly happy since she was asking for more, has suffered measurable "suffering or injury to health". I also challenge them to explain why they don't believe locking him up won't cause emotional harm to the girl. If they can't, then perhaps we should hear why any prosecution witness who said it would hasn't committed perjury.

Demonisation (or "denormalisation" as the PC brigade calls it) of any group in society is not something governments in free societies exist to do. Perverting the existing law to make an example of one person to frighten everybody is disgusting. Anybody who believes in individual freedom must oppose this.

NEIL CRAIG

Woodlands Road

Glasgow