Submitted by Anne Landman on
The proposed legislation to have the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulate tobacco is "window-dressing masquerading as legislation," according to Alan Blum, M.D., director of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. Putting the country's most lethal consumer product under control of the FDA will perpetuate the myth long favored by the industry that cigarettes can be made safer. The industry itself long ago started a PR campaign to assure people it was possible to identify and remove any component of smoke that was found to cause disease, and went on to leverage public fear of smoking to market gimmicks like filters that were "just what the doctor ordered" and conferred "double-barreled health protection." Lobbying to remove cigarette ads from TV and put weak, unobtrusive warning labels on cigarette packs has also served the industry's interests by giving them legal cover and saving thousands in advertising costs while doing little to actually restrain tobacco promotion. With the passage of the "Marlboro Preservation Act," the FDA -- which already has difficulty assuring the public that peanuts and pistachios are safe -- would now be handed regulation of cigarettes. While well intentioned, the bill is misguided. It ought to carry its own warning: "This legislation is deceptive, and it will prove devastating to public health."
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Anonymous replied on Permalink
Why Are Typical Cigs the "most lethal product" ?
[Edited to fix a few typos.}
To say that the undefined, un-described tobacco is "the most lethal consumer product" is either to outright lie, or to omit a lot of integral details.
* Most cigarettes are contaminated with combos of any of about 450 US Registered tobacco pesticides...tobacco being about the sixth most pesticide-intensive crop.
* Many of those pesticides are chlorine chemicals that, when added to smoke from the chlorine-bleached paper, produce high levels of No-Safe-Dose dioxin. Are Agent Orange and Times Beach etc atrocities deleted from our history books?
* Virtually all diseases said to be "tobacco related" are impossible to be caused by smoke from any plant...but are already notorious effects of dioxin exposures.
* If any patient diagnosed with "smoking related" illness (i.e., illness caused by the patient) has been checked for body-burdens of dioxins, radiation, or pesticides (from the cigarettes or elsewhere), that news hasn't been published.
* Most "tobacco products" are contaminated with any of about 1400 untested, often toxic, sometimes carcinogenic, non-tobacco additives.
* For decades, typical so-called "tobacco products" have "legally" contained burn-accelerants...to speed up use, improve sales, and boost "sin" tax revenues. The thousands of so-called "smoking related" fires each year are said to be about "smoking" (by the victims), not about the psychopathic arsonists who put the burn accelerants into the cigarettes, and failed to offer a word of info or warning about that.
* Most cigarettes contain added addiction-enhancing substances.
* Most cigarettes contain any number of Kid-Attracting sweeteners, flavors, and soothing substances.
* Most cigarettes may be contaminated with radiation (PO-210) from still legal (!) phosphate fertilizers.
* Low-end cigarettes may contain not a shred of tobacco...but, instead, "tobacco substitute material" made, in Patented ways, from all sorts of industrial waste cellulose...none of that likely to be organic...pesticide or chlorine-free. Measured shot of nicotine added, of course.
To say that tobacco is the most lethal product is absurd...not to mention that tobacco is a traditionally-used Natural Plant...a "product" of the earth. That's Quite Different from the industrial concoctions sold to defrauded and deceived millions as "tobacco products".
Incidentally...not one study submitted in courts or legislatures makes clear if it's about plain tobacco, or about grotesquely adulterated tobacco, or even about tobacco at all. We do not know yet what is studied...or what all the legislation is about.
Pesticide-contaminated, dioxin-delivering, radiation-contaminated, burn-accelerated, kid-attracting, addiction-enhanced, possibly tobacco-free cigarettes may be the Most Lethal Consumer Products...but, to blame...scapegoat...tobacco plants for that is to accept liability-dodging "science" from those with so much to loose if the additives and adulterants were brought into the discussion.
An easily-Googled site called "Fauxbacco" has ample references for the above.