Now that the true figures are revealing that over 100 million Americans smoke and England has thrown in the towel on their “war” against smokers and just given up, the new “war” against obesity has taken top news. (Don’t express shock. It’s been quietly building for 10 years now.) Surely everyone’s been keeping the “fat kills” articles. No? Better start.

I wonder if Ms. Coco and her ilk will jump on that bandwagon and spew their hatred and false claims that relate to children dying from exposure to “third-hand fat”? hehehehehe

No, this is wrong.

Roughly 18% of American adults smoke, most of these are over the age of 50, and a fraction of these is likely to incur a smoking-related disease. According to the American Cancer Society, there is no way to determine if a smoker develops cancer as a direct result of smoking or of exposure to other carcinogens or (most probable) exposure to both. Smoking restrictions are so stringent that few people have any exposure to cigaret smoke whatsoever. (Contrast this with our exposure to traffic smoke.) For these reasons, tobacco is clearly not a public health risk. Smokers who have worked for decades, providing for their families, feel they are, as adults, entitled to make personal consumer choices—such as whether to use tobacco, alcohol or to consume unhealthy foods—without Big Brother intervening.

You disagree. The question, then, is: To what extent should American adults be allowed to make personal consumer choices, without unrestrained government “disincentives”?  If it is truly a good idea to take such extreme measures against the use of tobacco, then we have an urgent responsibility to concentrate on the more prevalent dangers—those products and choices that result in the greatest harm, at the greatest public expense.  This is where cigaret smoking starts falling pretty low on the list of
priorities.

If the issue is air quality, our greatest health care risks are caused motor vehicles. Unlike cigaret smoke, the smoke from your car contains oil particles, and is far more carcinogenic than cigaret smoke. Do you drive? It would take a crowd of chain smokers to have the same impact as starting up your car.  While few of us smoke, most adults drive.

If the issue is public costs, the demon is food manufacturers and consumers. Obesity results in a myriad of health problems and shortens lives.  It often impacts the quality of life, creating problems ranging from depression to bone and joint problems to heart disease.  In the US, healthy foods are often the most expensive, and hyper-processed foods are the norm.

Need I mention alcohol, an addictive substance that damages virtually every organ in the body, and results in destroyed careers, destroyed families, destroyed lives—not to mention its impact on traffic crashes, domestic violence, crime, etc., etc.
Alcohol makes tobacco look benign in comparison.

It is one thing to restrict smoking in public (as we should do with alcohol, ending the tavern culture that has cost so many lives), but quite another to impose excessive and punitive measures. It is simply wrong, and contrary to everything we claim to believe in, to target this single, tiny segment of the population.

I was googling to find the Virginia court rulings and came across this:

107 years Spotsylvanian celebrates with friends

8/1/2006
AMY FLOWERS UMBLE

Anna Smith turned 107 July 23, but she wasn’t interested in celebrating.

Outside in the smoking courtyard at Beverly Healthcare, Smith was more interested in her cigarette than in telling her life story to a reporter.
<snip>

Reminds me of the time about 20 years ago that a doctor was trying to get me to quit smoking. He asked, “What do you think would happen if you quit?”

I said, “I’d die.”

He asked, “What do you mean—do you really think you’d die?”

So I told him that I’d read about a 104-year-old woman in France who had smoked all of her adult life. The doctors finally talked her into quitting and she died soon afterward.

Tobacco is a Native American tradition. That’s what they smoked in their peace pipes. For all I know the anti-smoking campaign might be secretly funded by the Pentagon because they’re afraid of peace breaking out and all the money they’d lose.

There may be some, but I don’t personally know of any non-smokers who lived past 103. I’m not ruling out the possibility that I might quit some day—if things got really bad and I was depressed and suicidal, I suppose I might try it before I tried more drastic measures. Right now I’m only sixty-nine, I’ve been smoking for fifty-three years, and I see absolutely no reason to risk shortening my life span by quitting now.

I don’t drive a car, don’t drink, and don’t use legal or illegal drugs. I have a cigarette machine and I roll my own cigarettes from tobacco with no chemical additives. I feel sorry for all the little kids who never smoked, whose parents never smoked, and who are undergoing surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy for cancer. If I thought it would help even one of them, I’d stop smoking immediately. But I know better. Many of those kids were pushed around in strollers on city streets when they were infants, right at the same level with the exhausts from cars. And the people who are blythely driving around killing kids with their automobile pollution, keep telling me not to smoke. I’ve never listened to hypocrites and I’m not going to start now.

I wonder what kind of car Marie Cocco drives. Do you suppose it’s one of those electrics or hybrids? My guess is she drives an ordinary petroleum-fueled car and her subconscious is making her feel so guilty that she has to find somebody to lash out at.

Anti-smokers just throw out “second-hand smoke is deadly!” and, like zealot X-tians, expect everyone to swallow what they are saying, be very ashamed of their behavior and dive into the pool and take up the battlecry without question.

They never offer ANY proof, because the actual proof is that second-hand smoke does NOT cause all the so-called health risks their rallying cries claim. The Virginia courts finally allowed in all the actual scientific and medial data that proves second-hand smoke is in no way “evil”. Or, did you miss those recent news articles that grudgingly had to announce that Virginia courts ruled that smoking bans could not be enacted because the evidence did not prove in any way that second-hand smoke could impact anyone’s health? Most anti-smokers just started screaming louder and whining and threatened to “force” the voters of Virginia to “send a clear message to their government representatives by voting for even harsher bans and much higher taxes on tobacco”. (Hello Google. Hmmmm let me search…)

I had to sit through yet another day of correlating actual medical facts garnered from thousands of hospitals in the United States and listen to how insurance companies could squirm out of paying for high-end care while upping our cut for insurance agents and company big-wigs. Their yachts seem to be getting more encrusted and need more regular cleanings. (That’s my snarky conclusion anyway.) And now they want to find a way to blame brain cancer on smokers, it seems, because it’s reached #1 and the output is just putting a stain on the system. Oh my.

Your health care costs are going up again! So are your taxes on tobacco! And your Constitution is once again, just annoying toilet paper stuck to the well-heeled shoes of health care officials who pretty much laugh at the idea you are entitled to it. Oh, and beware the overweight! There are new restrictions coming your way, which means higher insurance costs because you’re a “liability”. And wait until you hear about your daughters being so valiantly “immunized” against cervical cancer…..

I really hate this business. And this country’s idiots.

Richard, while I commend what you are doing, I agree with you that when it comes to known carcinogens it would be better to mitigate their fatal impact by starting at the beginning. So why not make it harder for kids to start driving? Insist that all ads for automobiles include health warnings such as, “The Surgeon General has determined that the emissions from this vehicle can be harmful to your health,” and prohibit movies, videos, and advertisements that are aimed at children or aired during prime time and make cars seem attractive. We don’t teach children to smoke or drink in school, so why do we teach them to drive?

Yeah, since the microscopic particles from wear on brakes and tires, and the hydrocarbon particulates from automobile exhaust are known carcinogens, if you want to drive, do it where no one else will suffer the impacts. Higher taxes on cars, no credit for people trying to buy them, and absolutely no bailouts for the automobile industry. This is an industry that hooks teens deliberately, deliberately bought up and destroyed public transportation systems to increase their sales, and is responsible for wars of aggression based on lies to obtain the fuel to pollute our air. They don’t need Americans anymore, there are millions of people driving cars in China.

We already have laws in California against smoking in public places like restaurants, bars, and parks, when there is absolutely no proof that second-hand smoke contributes to cancer, but we force nonsmokers to breathe in known and scientifically proven carcinogenic particles from cars whether they want to or not—even infants in large cities are smoking the equivalent of more than a pack a day just by breathing the air, and it was even worse before the so-called Clean Air Act.

The new tax increase of over TWO THOUSAND PERCENT on rolling tobacco isn’t going to bring in much revenue for SCHIP because only the poorest of the poor roll their own cigarettes and many homeless veterans who will no longer be able to afford to buy rolling tobacco might suddenly remember that they know how to use guns, but a tax increase of over two thousand percent on cars, and at least five thousand percent on luxury cars (the kind owned by legislators and their AIG, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs cronies), would fund a lot of health care for kids easily.

Did you look at the comment I posted below, Richard? Can you understand that studies have proven that there are ten times as many cases of all types of cancer, including lung cancer, in areas with a lot of cars than in rural areas with few cars, among both smokers and nonsmokers? Or do you just buy the lies of the automobile industry that you see on TV?

I hear you, CJ.

SCHIP is the most regressive tax of all:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/20286

It imposes more than a TWO THOUSAND PERCENT INCREASE on rolling tobacco as of April 1st, just in case some homeless veterans weren’t having a hard enough time coping with PTSD. It is, quite possibly, the highest tax increase ever, and it is being imposed on the poorest of the poor, those who can’t even afford to buy cigarettes and have to roll their own.

Many people smoke to ward off hunger pangs because they don’t get enough to eat. (It is a known fact that stopping smoking is often associated with weight gain among those who can afford food.)

We need socialized medicine so that everyone, not just children, can have access to health care, and if we need to fund social services or bailouts, the way to do it is to roll back the enormous tax cuts on the rich and impose taxes on luxuries that only the richest of the rich can afford. Why not tax mega-yachts, private jets, and high fashion clothes? Do you think that somebody who can afford a few million for a yacht, a jet plane, or dresses and suits that cost thousands of dollars, can’t afford to fund children’s health care more easily than homeless people? The rich wouldn’t even feel any hardship and it would benefit them greatly as they wouldn’t have to spend so much money on financial advisers to help them avoid paying taxes.

Smoking rates have decreased greatly, but lung cancer rates have not.

We have reached a point where anything that our government says can safely be assumed to be a lie. NAFTA didn’t improve our economy and create more jobs as promised, quite the opposite—it encouraged job outsourcing. The wars based on lies in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t make us safer from terrorists, they greatly increased the number of people in the world who hate us. Multinational agriculture corporations didn’t feed the world, they made it harder for the poorest countries of the world to get any food at all while making it extremely difficult and expensive for us to get wholesome food.

Don’t tell me that the government that is using depleted uranium weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan, knowing full well that the microscopic particles from those weapons are still radioactive and will be for thousands of years, and that they are picked up by the trade winds and deposited randomly in oceans, rivers, fields, and cities all over the world and can never be cleaned up, cares about my health. This is the same government that told the downwinders that above ground nuclear tests were perfectly safe and fed plutonium to orphans. This is not a government that cares about people, it cares only about power and profits.

Did Obama or Congress need to impose a tax on cigarettes in order to give billions of dollars to AIG and other big companies who claimed to be broke AFTER they had donated large amounts to their election campaigns? Of course not. For the rich, the money is always there. But for health care for uninsured children? No money—gotta tax the poor.

Well, I’ve known three who died of lung cancer, one of whom ever smoked.

But demonizing of smoking, and by extension smokers, has been ongoing for decades. We who engage have been brought low in the same way Chavez is regularly brought low by Kitty Pilgrim in her capacity as Dobb’s deputy. In Kitty’s case, right-wing demonizing; in Cocco’s case centrist-liberal demonizing. Not lone liberal in her cause.

Dear Marie:

Welcome to slippery slope, whereupon you appear already to have fallen on your backside.

Here we go again with liberals with their roads to hell paved with their condescending “good intentions.” In the current case, for sake of us dopes subject to of vast tobacco-industry conspiracy. Cocco’s road would have government regulate further what you put in your body, and again by extension, simply your body.

Now taking the point of view of pro-choicers who would not have women’s bodies wholly regulated. But if you smoke, you’re bod is ours, say libs. Including Cocco, and so she would have statedeclare, and then render, smokers revenue-bearing property.

Trotted out yet again by Cocco is tired, false claim that smoking is cause of damn near anything that settles on a body. Smoking long ago became handy scapegoat, by now claimed to be the source of extreme cost of healthcare overall. Except that there is zero evidence in support of claim, and so I dare Cocco to provide any. (Something more than highly dubious statistical correlations, while bearing in mind Disraeli’s comment regarding statistics. LA would be home to lung cancer I’d think, as a result of what I breathe in while sitting in traffic. A study a few years ago showed that LA-raised kids have a lower lung capacity than kids raised elsewhere. Is that because Angelinos smoke more? And far more cases of asthma nowadays than when majority of population smoked.)

But let’s say nonsense is true: I’m already paying through smoky nose—in federal and states taxes—for my own cost to society in the event I become sick. And NOW for SCHIP too! (As though providing insurance to children were the sole responsibility of smokers. Were Pelosi’s Dems, who were so bent on getting that deal through grandstanding Congress, really concerned for children, they’d have hit up every adult taxpayer. Because MORAL obligation of ALL adults constituting ANY society. For those of you who don’t smoke but who claim to be concerned for America’s children, send donation to appropriate agency.)

I’m reminded too of Schwarzenegger in his, and California State legislature’s, endless effort to extract blood from stone. Along with petty local governments that when not interested in extraction are always and forever interested in moralizing grandstanding. In the case of state-imposed sales taxes, general idea is to burden lower orders with cost of corporate welfare at the same time as upper order is spared burden of having to support its own damn self.

Smoking is—first and foremost—a (relatively, compared to crappy movie w/ popcorn) form of entertainment popular among those constituting lower orders. Including teens. So’s beer. But the Coccos of the world would instruct same as to what is in their best interest. As though she’s the slightest idea. Cocco and fellow liberals would have government regulate bodies by whatever measures-on behalf of idiots not quite to her standard wise-wise.

As it happens, death begins at birth. One might just as well enjoy downhill, whether long or short. Either way, usually “nasty and brutish.” Is Cocco certain that it’s not taxing of tobacco that causes sickness more than smoking of tobacco? (Lot’s of discussion of how stress kills. Smoking is stress reliever as much as form of entertainment.)

Pardon as I light up and reach for can of MGD, before liberals render both beyond my meager means.

Sincerely,

Smokin’ mad CJ

Kfreed nailed it: “I’d be willing to bet that automobile exhaust and pollutants in the atmosphere have something to do with it, but nobody wants to admit it. Its easier to point at smokers and say, ‘You’re ruining my air’ than it is to look at your own culpability. NO? If I were to lock you in the garage with the car running, you’d be dead in a matter of minutes. If I locked you in the garage with me and proceeeded to smoke myself silly, we’d be in there together for the rest of our natural lives.”

A joint Swiss-American study in 1972 found that there were ten times higher rates among smokers and nonsmokers for ALL types of cancer in areas with a lot of automobile traffic than in rural areas with few cars. I haven’t been able to find a link to the original study, but I did find this reference:

Journal Article Printable view
Luftverschmutzung und Lungenkrebs
Luftverschmutzung und Lungenkrebs
La pollution de l’air et le cancer du poumon
Air pollution and lung cancer
Journal Sozial- und Präventivmedizin/Social and Preventive Medicine
Publisher Birkhäuser Basel
ISSN 0303-8408 (Print) 1420-911X (Online)
Issue Volume 31, Number 1 / January, 1986
DOI 10.1007/BF02103747
Pages 39-41
SpringerLink Date Friday, September 16, 2005

PDF (363.5 KB)Free PreviewFree Preview

Luftverschmutzung und Lungenkrebs

Georges Schüler1
(1) Kantonalzürcherisches Krebsregister, 8091 Zürich

Abstract This review on air pollution and lung cancer recapitulates the main issues in this field (urban-rural-gradients; experimental data and occupational epidemiology of exposure to PAH; smoking and occupation as confounders). Definite risk increases have been observed in the vicinity of point emission sources. Within Switzerland lung cancer shows an urban/rural gradient in both sexes. The geographical distribution of the male cases can hardly be explained only by the patterns of smoking alone.

Do the Rest of US a favor and smoke a cigarette or Eat a Big Mac, We need the Damn Boomers to die in a Timely manner!!!!
‘Live Longer with Alzheimers’- yeah that’ll save US money! Idiot!!!
The Boomers have doomed the rest of us by not producing another generation that will be able to support their huge Ass!So it’s gonna take US in our 40-50’s to help ‘carry that weight’.What was already a cluster was only compounded in the realization these Boomers empties the coffers before they ‘took the money and run’. ‘Give me money, that’s all I want’ was the Rallying cry of the Boomers. They began siphoning off and pilferring in the ‘80’s when that didn’t get them rich enough they removed all Safeguards to Economic solvancy in the ‘90’s, then put one of theirs in office to max out of our credit line with Two damn wars, while encouraging those in ‘oversight’ capacities to take a nap.
You SOB’s who have been so vain as to want to live forever are literally killing the rest of US. Living Things Die for a reason- to make way for the next Round to survive and thrive.Get over it, You Will DIE. So either choose to go with some grace and dignity or spend 20 years playing with your own feces, while racking up exorbinant medical care costs to be paid by the rest of US and your descendants.The Boomer are the WORST generation- Screwed US all and expect US to continue footing the bill.

TLynn, kindly take your opinions out of my lungs. Government’s purpose is not to keep us from making decisions. It’s to keep us from harming each other. I’m lighting a cigarette right now, am I causing you cancer?

I get my numbers from A) Health care specialists and B) Oncologists. They’re the only ones who seem less concerned about cigarette smoking as they are about you know, living in a world full of carcinogens. I talk to people in the energy field about things. Brain cancer IS the top killer according to the AMA. Pancreatic cancer IS #2. Lung cancer is 4 in America, 3 in Canada. Read a news article. Colon cancer is the most over-diagnosed cancer there is. I still think it’s the wrong way to smoke, but fanatics need a demon to blame everything on…

Ever hear of truth.com? Wonder why their commercials were pulled? They were deemed “misleading” in our now-present soft language. Actually, they were all lies. I loved that bullshit about “5 million people die every year from smoking-related deaths!” And that big list of names? What was not presented as the truth by truth.com is that 5 million number was fairly accurate, but it is world-wide. They purposely presented it as “in American only”. The body bags? World-wide. Not America only. Let’s cause fear and panic! Ooooh. Lets not forget the world has six and a half billion people. What’s the math on 5 million out of 6 1/2 billion? There are more deaths from car accidents. They were sued into silence by actual evidence. Same stuff that finally made it to a Virginia court that stopped that state from enacting smoking bans because anti-smokers LIED. About everything.

The thing is, it doesn’t matter. But hey, if you feel good about being the only person this world is about, that can’t be changed. The fact that you seem willing to cheer on children being mind-bended into calling smokers drug addicts or having their children taken away from them, well, that’s your schtick in this life.

Except I hope you’re not fat. That’s the next big war and they’re bringing out the same damn ammo for this one, down to taking children away from one parent in a divorce and giving them to the one who isn’t fat. Won’t matter if the other parent is a crack dealer or a child molester anymore than it has if one parent is a smoker. Frankly, this stuff is going to go way beyond the initial Prohibition. It’s going to make the Chicago and New York wars look like diddly. It’ll turn out the same way. Lots of people dead for no reason and a new Amendment to a document that doesn’t need it. Businesses have already turned away and are allowing us to smoke regardless of “laws”. Returning vets are fed up with the people in this country and doing what they want because they didn’t fight FOR repression.

If you want some fun, Google “Anti-Smoking League”. It’s a generalization of anti-smoking groups and even non-smokers hate them. Most non-smokers are actually very cool about smoking and don’t seem to mind. Ex-smokers and the “I’m DEATHLY allergic to smoke!” people who are assholes about the whole thing. Guess it’s just like the Evangelicals and Pentecostals. It used to be just Mormons everyone hated, but once the three groups got arrogant, people started dropping god.

Yellowstone won’t erupt early enough, really. But you can bet your ass, they’ll be a snotty, self-serving anti-smoker there whining about your lighting up a ciggie before everyone dies from the ash.

Ever notice how only anti-smoking cheering gets press? Truthdig itself only carries “Yay! Let’s get rid of smoking!” stories. Eat the pablum.

Ms. cocco you must not smoke.

Tlynn, using a cellular telephone causes cancer and car crashes. That’s tobacco and alcohol in one. Watching too much television destroys your memory and critical thinking skills.

Tobacco use is a choice and an addiction. You treat it as a health problem and a lifestyle choice, not a plague on society. Life isn’t pretty. Leave people alone.

I’d make the argument that our nation’s founding is specifically against prohibition based on moral relativism. We propose to protect the common good, but it is not enforced unless necessary. When I smoke, it’s not in front of you or your children. Let me be.

Do you honestly not see how similar that argument is to the radical right campaigning against homosexuality?

hello. i have smoked nonfiltered PM Commandos for 30 years. i stopped five years ago because engine exhaust was affectively reducing the breathing capacity of my left lung. i am now healthier and breathing better, but i miss the pleasure of the nicotine to help me during my day. the people that are being hurt by this assault on a trdition in this country as old as the settlers; are the families that were farming tobacco for generations that no longer are able: that they want to grow chickens; to ship to them communists. #1 leading cause of cancer is and always has been the burning of fossil fuels. we grow the best tobacco in the world here in America.

And make ALL pot legal while we’re at it. I’m genetically allergic to it myself, but why should that impact anyone else? The Constitution says nothing about the acts of one person being banned because of the health problems of another. Yay Constitution!

Ron Paul for President!

Marie doesn’t ever really say what kind of regulation she is talking about, but this piece seems to suggest an all out ban.  I am no fan of cigarettes.  I think its a nasty habit, and very bad for one’s health, but an all out ban would be a catastrophe.  Overnight a huge black market would be created which would dwarf the black market for drugs.  This might make the DEA happy, but we would pay a steep price for another experiment in prohibition.  This country doesn’t need another moral crusade to force the masses from harming themselves.  I think its time we move past this incessant need to ban any behavior we don’t like in an effort to protect people from themselves.  I truly despise moral legislation and those that promote it.  Let people treat their own bodies however they choose.  We need to just understand that we can never legislate ourselves to being a perfect body of people.  This world can never be perfect, there will always be people who make choices to do things which may be harmful.  We can’t go around trying to keep everyone safe from their own choices.  As long as others are not harmed people should be allowed to act and do as they wish.  I would like to know of one case where moral legislation actually stopped a problem it was trying to correct.  Prostitution is still around, drugs are still around, alcohol is still around.  All that has been done by banning those things is tons of money spent, many lives destroyed, and no true progress.  Sometimes you just need to ignore things you don’t like.

It’s just more lies by the fanatically inclined. The smoking rate dropped from 56% to a supposedly 20% that was not in fact 20%. More like 38% in truthful numbers. But, the Anti-Smoking League “fiddled” the numbers to make people believe they WERE succeeding when they were not.

Lie #1: If we stop people from smoking, health care costs will go down.

Why have they risen 1600% since 2000?

Lie #2: If we make people stop smoking indoors, the health of all will improve and therefore, health costs will go down.

Brain cancer is #1. Pancreatic cancer is #2. Stomach cancer #3. We ALL have cancer in us. Why are the “healty” dying in higher numbers than smokers? Because we all die.

Lie #3: heart attacks. #1 killer in America. NOT in any other countries that smoke more than we do.

Now, another couple of lies that were introduced only by the Anti-Smoking bunch:

Third-hand smoke. No such thing. Radioactivity levels are higher in smoking homes.

...Huh?? Well, since my lifemate used to work in nuclear things for the Navy, he knows how to test for such idiocies. So he did. Funny, we smoke a LOT in our house and the radiation readings inside are the SAME as outside! But the lie… ah, as long as they lie and allow a portion of the American population to be treated like dirt and filth, have their rights revoked because let’s face it, anyone who drinks and/or smokes doesn’t deserve to be covered under the Constitution! They’re filth! They’re garbage! It’s all THEIR fault this world is dying! If we can just stop them, the world will heal, no one will ever, ever, ever die of cancer again,, and my genetically defective, asthma-riddled self will breathe easier knowing I’ve beaten, humiliated and rid the world of the filth inhabiting it so I’ll get to heaven when I finally DO die in 2 or 300 years.

You will die. You will not live one second longer than you’re supposed to (Jim Fixx comes to mind). What you do to others matters. Even if there isn’t a god anywhere. You’re a lousy human being, you’ll pay in your own way. There ARE 50-50 solutions, but you can’t abide with the idea because you stopped smoking and you want one SO bad, if you even SEE someone smoking, you run and buy a pack and sneak them. Your idiotic “smoking takes years off your life!” cry is worthless. It takes it off the back end years so if I miss out on hobbling painfully, forgetting who I or anyone else is, and not pissing my pants because I forgot how to pee, well cheers! I don’t mind because I’m not afraid to die. I AM afraid to forget who I am and pee my chair at family dinners, however.

The time for lies is over. Unless you LIKE treating people like garbage, and most of you truly do. You can’t win a war, you can’t have your way with abortion, you are powerless. But THIS you can do. Right?

Smokers? It’s simple, really. Talk to the IRS and refuse to pay ANY taxes anymore. You CAN do it. You have a Constitutional right to it. Do NOT pay their “interest on taxes you WOULD have paid”. Do NOT go out unless there’s a smoking section. Stop being afraid and ashamed. Speak up! Don’t pander. If you don’t want to smoke, stop. If you LIKE smoking, keep doing it. Email your politicians and annoy them! Mention the Native Americans and how “white people calling themselves Christians” are PERSONALLY attempting to take away a source of income to them as well as treading on their religious and income-making rights and YOUR First Amendment rights. And remember: What works in British Law is NOT supposed to work under American Law. The British are cringing at the insanity of Americans. They are even admitting that their smoking rate is rising astronomically, especially among the young who are mesmerized and seduced by the “naughty taboo of it all”. Congrats, Americans! Kids are smoking in huge new rates too because of what YOU are doing, not us or advertisement. Good job!

As it’s been said in “The Departed”, “We’re all dying. Act accordingly.”

Jason, that’s quite the counter intuitive argument. Liberal Progressives and the New Left have very little interest in controlling anyone’s life. The neo-liberal right wingers since Reagan have done more to control your life than any Progressive ever has.

Do not confuse Marie with the grassroots progressive movement happening right now. She is a vestigial part of the Democratic party, and we’re working on removing elected Dems with similar attitudes and ideas in next year’s primary races. Let alone the fact that her opinion wouldn’t control anyone either. People with obscenely narrow-sighted, reactionary gutterspeak of your ilk are being made more foolish by the day. I’d suggest you open your mind, or risk being part of a ridiculed and marginalized false ideology.

This is why I always struggle with the phrase “liberal” a.k.a. “progressive”.

Just another busy body wanting to regulate the people. Liberals want to control what I do, when and how. There is nothing liberal about it. It’s all about controlling the other person.

Next, they will try to mandate health regimes. Fail to show up for your morning physical training and you will wind up in jail so they can control your every move.

Liberals love China’s form of governance. Disagree with them, earn a trip to the firing line.

Another self-righteous plea by an old school liberal with few substantive ideas of their own. Marie, along with others, probably remembers the battle against giant tobacco companies of yesteryear. That’s fine work. Good job creating a social climate of intolerance towards smokers, and fighting a big business who was very involved in lying and distorting facts to its customers and the general populace.

The whole reason this tobacco argument is sanctimonious for me lies in the fact that people with vices are easy targets for folks with no vision or intellectual property to bring to the center stage of American politics. It’s why folks on the hard right wing focus so much on the godlessness, abortion, sexuality and foul language. It doesn’t become any less hypocritical when the old Dems and old liberals use smokers as tax punching bags.

What about having the FDA actually work, and have higher standards for our quality of food? We pour petrochemicals on our crops to fertilize, remove pests and drag malnourished (and possibly genetically modified) produce and animal carcasses thousands of miles to infect people with e.coli, growth hormones and a host of other questionable chemicals that DO cause cancer, malnutrition, obesity and poor mental health in people. Locally grown, sustainable agriculture is more important than having a damned re-enactment of a battle thoroughly won.

When SCHIP passed, which I support and am happy for passing, taxes were substantially increased on tobacco products and alcohol. It’s the easy way of raising revenue without significantly diminishing public support. A political calculation which takes advantage of a certain segment of Americans. Make it so expensive, no one will use it… and then who do you tax? Idiots.

Lots of good programs require taxes, but lawmakers cannot be cowards when it comes to paying for necessary public safety net and protections of the common good of citizens. Everyone should be asked to sacrifice a little, and go ahead and put up a little more tax on luxuries and vices. The increase I’ve seen for my rolling tobacco habit is a 2000% increase (not a typo) from 1.99 a pound tax to over 23.00 a pound tax. Regular cigarettes went up again .79 cents… however cigars only raised .60 a piece.

Make your argument, and include everyone. It is not good policy to target people with vices exclusively when looking for revenue. Yeah, big tobacco is not a nice thing to argue for. They are just as corrupted as AIG or Monsanto. It is, however, kicking people already heavily taxed because it is a safe target. Most smokers are still blue collar, working class people. Raise taxes on private jets and imported granite.

Yes, because the FDA does such a good job it should get more responsibility.

Why look at what a good job it does in the bidding of agricultural and pharmaceutical corporations.

Smokers should all quit today, if for no other reason than to starve the states of all those taxes (which simply do not get put away to “deal with health costs of smoking related illnesses”).

But the larger question is why both ends of the political spectrum are so intent on legislating away everything that they find distasteful?

It is important to remember that to many Native Americans, tobacco is sacred and used in ceremonies.  There should be no adverse regulation against growing tobacco by Native Americans for personal and group ceremonial use.  The old wild varieties of tobacco that we grow would knock a cowboy off his horse.  It is not a commercial tobacco but a gift from Creator.