the tobacco companies couldn't inflict all those other poisons on the public without their basic product, namely tobacco, and its inherently addictive properties.
The New England Journal of Medicine exposure of health insurers investing billions of dollars in cigarette manufacturing is a great scandal, one with the potential to prompt public, and perhaps government, calls to remove such insurers from our public health care system...but the reporting of the story has some unfortunate, distracting, unnecessary, and serious problems.
To call the cigarette industry "tobacco companies" or their products "tobacco", is to accept easily the biggest marketing deceit of our times.
It is to accept the word of easily the most non-credible industry in modern history...as if they just provide tobacco as has been used for about ten thousand years...in the Americas, at least.
To refer to those firms as being just about tobacco is to serve their marketing and liability-dodging interests, and it is to imply blame for global epidemics of so-called "smoking related" disease and death on a natural plant...and on those who think and are still told that they are just smoking tobacco.
This is to utterly corrupt science and medicine...and law. It is to contribute to global- scale social disruption on top of that. And it is to greatly assist some of the worst of the worst health-damaging industries evade civil and criminal penalties, and termination of their deadly businesses.
It is to ignore what typical cigarettes Really Are...namely, smoking products contaminated with any of 450 U.S. registered tobacco pesticide residues, dioxin-producing chlorine pesticides, dioxin-producing chlorine-bleached paper, carcinogenic levels of radiation from certain phosphate tobacco fertilizers, fire-starting burn accelerants, kid-attracting sweeteners and flavors and aromas, artificially-low nicotine levels to prompt more smoking, addiction-enhancing substances, any of about 1400 untested-often-toxic-or-carcinogenic non-tobacco additives, and even fake tobacco made from pesticide-chlorine-contaminated industrial waste cellulose.
We need to persuade the Good Guys, like Physicians for a National Health Program, to eschew the common, colloquial cigarette industry term "tobacco" to refer to likely the most complex, multi-ingredient, pesticide-contaminated consumer product on the earth...one that delivers the industrial chlorine byproduct, dioxin, to humans in the absolutely worst possible way, through inhalation. The lungs are very efficient organs---unfortunately, in this case.
Call cigarette makers the "Pesticide Peg Industry", or "Big Dioxin Dowels", or "Manufacturers of Radiation Rods". Leave Mother Nature, or The Great Spirit, out of it.
Call them "Contaminated-Cigarette Makers" if that seems less abrasive on the poor dears.
And show a little compassion for the deceived, secretly-poisoned, unprotected, insufficiently-warned, utterly uncompensated, scapegoated, demonized, unjustly legally burdened, often dying, and innocent smokers. Think about relatives or friends who might have died from so-called "smoking related" causes. How many of them may be dismissed as dirty, reckless, rude, or suicidal nicotine addicts?
This is about more important things than "smelly hair", "disgusting smoke-filled bars" or "beach litter", as vital as those issues are to some.
I know the truth in some of the subjects, that David is ignorant about but still holds dear, because it is in opposition of his father's stance on those subjects. Speaking for myself, it detracts from David's position when he has not researched the subjects that he is against.
It's truly most hypocritical when Big Tobacco avoids corporate responsibility by blaming the victims of their product, their profit.
Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the USA today according to the CDC in Atlanta. "The Drug War" should be against Big Tobacco and their political allies like former United States Senator Elizabeth Dole and her husband Bob Dole.
My father started smoking in the 1940's and tried to quit many times- it was simply too addictive for him to quit. He didn't "just" die back in 2005 of lung cancer- he was intentionally murdered- for monetary gain. Don't we as a nation have laws against murder? for monetary gain?
After all, how many of the world's mega-corporations intentionally murder their customers?
Ditto Burt.
Here in California I've noticed the odd changes in my garden lately too.
My tomatoes, roses and other semi yearlies live and bloom the whole year.
Other crops and flowers bloom either too early or too late in the year.
Same goes for the plants in my local parks.
Glad (but sad) to know I'm not the only one who noticed this.
the tobacco companies couldn't inflict all those other poisons on the public without their basic product, namely tobacco, and its inherently addictive properties.
Do you have any other point to make?
The New England Journal of Medicine exposure of health insurers investing billions of dollars in cigarette manufacturing is a great scandal, one with the potential to prompt public, and perhaps government, calls to remove such insurers from our public health care system...but the reporting of the story has some unfortunate, distracting, unnecessary, and serious problems.
To call the cigarette industry "tobacco companies" or their products "tobacco", is to accept easily the biggest marketing deceit of our times.
It is to accept the word of easily the most non-credible industry in modern history...as if they just provide tobacco as has been used for about ten thousand years...in the Americas, at least.
To refer to those firms as being just about tobacco is to serve their marketing and liability-dodging interests, and it is to imply blame for global epidemics of so-called "smoking related" disease and death on a natural plant...and on those who think and are still told that they are just smoking tobacco.
This is to utterly corrupt science and medicine...and law. It is to contribute to global- scale social disruption on top of that. And it is to greatly assist some of the worst of the worst health-damaging industries evade civil and criminal penalties, and termination of their deadly businesses.
It is to ignore what typical cigarettes Really Are...namely, smoking products contaminated with any of 450 U.S. registered tobacco pesticide residues, dioxin-producing chlorine pesticides, dioxin-producing chlorine-bleached paper, carcinogenic levels of radiation from certain phosphate tobacco fertilizers, fire-starting burn accelerants, kid-attracting sweeteners and flavors and aromas, artificially-low nicotine levels to prompt more smoking, addiction-enhancing substances, any of about 1400 untested-often-toxic-or-carcinogenic non-tobacco additives, and even fake tobacco made from pesticide-chlorine-contaminated industrial waste cellulose.
We need to persuade the Good Guys, like Physicians for a National Health Program, to eschew the common, colloquial cigarette industry term "tobacco" to refer to likely the most complex, multi-ingredient, pesticide-contaminated consumer product on the earth...one that delivers the industrial chlorine byproduct, dioxin, to humans in the absolutely worst possible way, through inhalation. The lungs are very efficient organs---unfortunately, in this case.
Call cigarette makers the "Pesticide Peg Industry", or "Big Dioxin Dowels", or "Manufacturers of Radiation Rods". Leave Mother Nature, or The Great Spirit, out of it.
Call them "Contaminated-Cigarette Makers" if that seems less abrasive on the poor dears.
And show a little compassion for the deceived, secretly-poisoned, unprotected, insufficiently-warned, utterly uncompensated, scapegoated, demonized, unjustly legally burdened, often dying, and innocent smokers. Think about relatives or friends who might have died from so-called "smoking related" causes. How many of them may be dismissed as dirty, reckless, rude, or suicidal nicotine addicts?
This is about more important things than "smelly hair", "disgusting smoke-filled bars" or "beach litter", as vital as those issues are to some.
It's truly most hypocritical when Big Tobacco avoids corporate responsibility by blaming the victims of their product, their profit.
Tobacco is the leading cause of preventable death in the USA today according to the CDC in Atlanta. "The Drug War" should be against Big Tobacco and their political allies like former United States Senator Elizabeth Dole and her husband Bob Dole.
My father started smoking in the 1940's and tried to quit many times- it was simply too addictive for him to quit. He didn't "just" die back in 2005 of lung cancer- he was intentionally murdered- for monetary gain. Don't we as a nation have laws against murder? for monetary gain?
After all, how many of the world's mega-corporations intentionally murder their customers?
Pages