quittin' smoking

[Brian Pennington]

On Mar 14, 2006, at 3:59 PM, Christopher tm wrote:
> On 3/14/06, Jeremy David <epistemology at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You're blaming lobbyists for anti-smoking sentiment and laws? Surely
>> you must be joking.
>>
>> Or maybe you haven't heard of the literally billions of dollars that
>> tobacco corporations spend to keep their product legal and virtually
>> un-regulated?
>
> Virtually unregulated?
>
> Now you're joking?

	Actually, it might surprise you to learn that cigarettes are not  
regulated by the government at all. The FDA, which normally has  
jurisdiction over such things, is not allowed to regulate cigarettes.  
There is no one, literally no one telling the cigarette companies  
what an acceptable level of mousepoop is, and furthermore no one  
telling them they can't put rat poison into cigarettes (which they  
do). I'll bet you have no idea what's in a cigarette. It's not just  
tobacco, I can tell you that, unless you're rolling your own.

> And, yes, lobbyists. Anti-smoking laws aren't parthenogenically
> sprouting out of Congressmens' foreheads.

	There are a fair number of politicians in the pockets of big tobacco  
companies and there always will be as long as politicians like money  
(i.e. until time stops). The difference is that most people  
appreciate a politician who creates laws that get smoke out of their  
faces, since there are more non-smokers than smokers. If you think  
that there is more money spent lobbying against smoking than there is  
for it, your head is so far in the ground that nothing I can say is  
going to get it out. These are massive companies and they make a ton  
of money, and they spend a lot trying to get across the message that  
smoking is cool and not that bad for you.