By now, everyone on the planet is aware of the dangers of cigarette smoking. Nevertheless, more than 3000 kids start the habit every day! Fighting the battle against cigarettes has long been a case of the tobacco industry versus common sense. However, at the same time, since common sense does not prevail, our Congress continues to attempt to legislate behavior (rather ineffectually) while the tobacco industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars fighting the legislation.
Early in 2009, legislation was passed which almost doubled the price of tobacco. This legislation went into effect April 1, 2009. Perhaps the rationale was that, if tobacco products became so costly, particularly in a bad economy, people would simply not be able to afford to poison themselves – or, at least, not as liberally. The trouble with this enforced type of behavior modification is that cigarette smoking is addictive. Attempts at quitting result in short tempers. Do they really suppose the person who has just been laid off is going to quit smoking while trying to land a new job? Not likely. Chances are they'll reduce their food budget before quitting cigarettes.
The positive result of such legislation? Government coffers grow. While these taxes are supposedly funding new programs to help reduce cigarette smoking and fund even more legislation to ban smoking in public places, we've all seen the efficacy of other such government efforts.
The government's latest move to put a damper on cigarette smoking has empowered the FDA with the authority to approve what ingredients may be allowed in tobacco products, mandate changes, eliminate toxins and disallow new tobacco products. Now, on the face of it, this may sound like a good thing. Nicotine is a toxin and the primary addictive substance in tobacco.
However, what's less known is that there are between 500 and 1000 'additives' to cigarette tobacco which are also addictive and also toxins. Shouldn't the legislation have put some real teeth into this FDA authority, requiring all of the additives be removed, thus approving a much less addictive product that people might actually be able to beat?
When I was much younger and commensurately naive, I thought that the FDA was supposed to regulate food and drugs in a manner that provided the consumer with safe products. Now I know that pharmaceutical companies put out drugs that, while passing FDA approval, are later found to have side effects with devastating consequences which go unnoticed for years. The FDA allows additives, growth hormones and antibiotics to enter our bodies through various approved foods. So why should we believe the FDA will do any better with cigarette 'safety'?
Taxation and attempts to legislate behavior seem more an issue of revenue and politics than real solutions to the cigarette smoking problem. Perhaps if the funding were used for classroom coursework for kids, with documentaries of patients on oxygen tanks and a few images of what cigarette smoking does to your lungs, the money might be well spent.
After all, if President Obama, an educated and intelligent man, still smokes, it seems that it's the future generation we should be targeting. In his remarks on the bill, President Obama said “... For over a decade, leaders of both parties have fought to prevent tobacco companies from marketing their products to children and provide the public with the information they need to understand what a dangerous habit this is.”
When this latest piece of legislation passed, the primary author of the bill, Representative Henry Waxman (D-California) made this statement: "I think we are today at the last gasp of the tobacco industry's efforts to protect their profits at the expense of the health and lives of the American people and to get children to take up this habit." The last gasp.
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