Posted on 06/10/2009 3:26:30 PM PDT by Drango
Sen. Dick Durbin was just 10 or 11 when he and his cousin Mike sneaked out behind a garage in East St. Louis, Ill., to have a smoke, Durbin's first. He didn't care much for the taste of the cigarette but, unfortunately, Mike did.
Mike died two weeks ago of tobacco-related lung disease.
"There he was, on oxygen, smoking the night before he died," remembered Durbin, D-Ill. "He just could not quit. It is a terrible addiction." Durbin's father, also a smoker, died at age 53 of lung cancer. "It was devastating to my family," Durbin said...
~snip" Reid said he, too, was 10 or 11 when he begged a puff from his older brother, ~SNIP
The Senate could vote as early as Wednesday on the legislation that for the first time would give the FDA powers to regulate the sale, manufacturing and marketing of tobacco products. The House has passed a similar bill and President Barack Obama supports it. ~snip
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said Obama has his own personal reason for backing the anti-smoking campaign. "He has struggled with tobacco addiction," she said. ~snip
Sen. Mike Enzi of Wyoming, the top Republican on the health committee, said he was opposing the FDA bill because it didn't go far enough to help people quit smoking or stop kids from picking up the habit. "My fierce opposition to smoking is a result of smoking killing my dad, and my mom, and my mother-in-law, and secondhand smoking conclusively affecting me," he said in a statement. "This is not political. This is personal."
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
I feel dirty that I'm on the same side as Waxman, Kennedy, Dodd, and Boxer. Except I believe the FDA shouldn't regulate tobacco, that power belongs to the states.
3,500 per day is a lot of children. You would like to believe conservatives would do something about it.
Gosh, I just find it hard to care about Dick Durbin’s problems....or his family’s for that matter.
I agree. I think it should be illegal for minors to purchase tobacco.
really? it most definately is addicting.. having said that, I love my cigars, I surely do.. not to worry though.. the dems will have tobacco banned... I see it coming.. they will ban tobacco “for the children”.
Thank Gaia I have the government to protect me.
ban tobacco and make it illegal to grow or possess. That way no one would do-I mean pot is illegal and no one grows, possess, or uses it.
Seriously if waxman, kennedy, dodd an boxer think it is so bad they should outlaw it-oh wait I forgot, the government(s) make billions taxing it.
Never mind.
So ban it then or STFU. Stop pussy-footing around the issue.
Yeah, and 13 kids per day die from gun violence.
Bingo! Nicely put.
Already illegal for minors to purchase it.
Ban it and be done with it.
How much longer would my 88 year old smoking and dipping grandfather have lived if he had never touched t’backy?
Already illegal for minors to purchase it.
Wow, that was quick! Well, problem solved then.
no more addictive than big gubermint.
I bet big,statist gubermint has killed more people, too.
That's a lot of stinky school restrooms.
Most definately.....not.
They can ban anything and everything, it won’t matter.
Just as we did when we were teens, so too will teens continue to find and obtain cigarettes, drugs, alcohol, etc. Banning something only causes them to want or try them more.
Somebody needs to put a vomit alert on this.
Bottom line - This is an issue for the states, always has been, and always will be.
Cigarettes are tobacco products - highly processed ones. You want to regulate that, fine I guess, whatever. (I’ll point out that anyone that consumes a product for 40 plus years and continues to live all that time will have a hard time convincing me that the product they’ve been consuming is principally the cause of their problems.)
My grandmother smoked for 60 years, and her health began to deteriorate precipitously the year her doctor finally badgered her into kicking the habit - never the same after that.
I’ll also point out, that tobacco companies could give a pack of cigarettes away to the distributor for free, and the distributor can turn around and give the pack to the retailer for free, and they in turn could agree to pass that on to the customer at no addtional expense, and the customer would still have to pay an average of $5.70/pack to the various governments (May issue, Cigar Magazine, 2009)
It’s ALREADY illegal to sell tobacco to minors in every state in the USA.
As such, please, is there any thing left that the federal government is not regulating in your life? I really want to know if there is something left that they haven’t touched at this point. Let that guide your heart on the issue, since most of the posts I’ve seen so far have been about how its so horrible how my wife’s cousin died of lung cancer after smoking for 30 years and not being able to kick the habit.
I had a classmate die of lung cancer at 32, and he was a marathoner who couldn’t have lived more heathfully if he had consulting help.
Leave. me. to. my. cigars. please.
It’s bad enough I can’t enjoy one under some roof somewhere, while somebody else wants ‘equal rights’ for committing acts of unprotected sodomy with random partners.
It’s just another power grab. That simple.
I think that was the joke....
What you mean "we", paleface? are you implying that I was anything other than pure as the driven snow in high school?
“You would like to believe conservatives would do something about it.”
This conservative does.
I support parents who teach their children right from wrong, discipline them, and teach them to not make stupid decisions about their health.
I support accurate consumer information.
Anything else is none of our damn business.
Like AlGore bringing em to tears at the convention about watching his sister die and swearing there, to fight tobacco. It would be sad, if he didnt stay in the Tobacco business for years after,,, that just makes his theater funny.
Struggled?? He is a closet smoker. Addicted. If he were a Republican those photos of smoking would have been banner headlines day after day. Yeah. Smoking is addictive. It is still a choice for many. I have never smoked. Both my parents were smokers. Always hated it but it is LEGAL. The Government makes waaaay to much in taxes for them to make it illegal.
Well it should be our business....
Civilization cannot survive with twelve-year-olds having babies, fifteen-year-olds shooting one another, seventeen-year-olds dying of AIDS, and eighteen-year-olds graduating with diplomas they cannot read. - Newt Gingrich (1997)
“I agree. I think it should be illegal for minors to purchase tobacco.”
_____________________________________
Uh...it is.
“Ban it and be done with it.”
..and lose all of that tax revenue and all those government jobs?
“I feel dirty that I’m on the same side as Waxman, Kennedy, Dodd, and Boxer”
And there is your answer,, convince all you want, compel none. And it cant be that addicting, my dad smoked 14 years, then quit cold turkey when he accidently burned a hole in my little sisters dress when she was 2.
Can’t do that with heroin. I think the habit and the ceremony of lighting up is more addicting than the substance itself.
And if the left is serious about it, let em start with a law forbidding all smoking in movies! (let em screw their own constituency for once)
And that democrat star chamber you mentioned, any willing to vote to cease *all* support for tobacco farming? Or would they vote to prohibit all export of tobacco? NOooo,, that would cost them votes. It’s just a game to them,,
“I think it should be illegal for minors to purchase tobacco.”
Ah yes, just pass a law, and it will fix everythinhg.
Started smoking when I was 13, and still do enjoy it. Will be 70 in little over a year. Father smoked most of his life, but past away at 92. Grandfather smoked all his life, a chain smoking pharmacist who literally worked every day of his life, and it took 93 years to kill him. All his children smoked. The last two of my aunts died in their 90s.
But for the sake of some who cannot do anything without getting sick, we’ll just deprive everyone else of their pleasure. Why should they enjoy life?
Hank
Why do you want government to control the behaviour of the governed? Where is that in the Constitution, federal or any state?
Durbin is a traitor anyway. He can rot in hell.
There was much the same rhetoric supporting Prohibition and look at consequences.
Dick, your cousin was about 65 years old, you had 55 years to get him to stop........why didn't you and why are you now so concerned?
Stay out my life you jackass......
If the liberals and do-gooders throughout the land were really sincere about their heart-wrenching tales of victimization by BIG BAD TOBACCO they would be working hard to make the product illegal.
Instead they spend their time thinking up new ways to squeeze tax money out of tobacco sales.
This isn’t about concern for the health of the populace.
If it was the federal and state governments would have put money from tobacco taxes and lawsuits into protected accounts to be spent only on tobacco related health issues.
But they have not done that - they have just run amok with it just like every other dollar they manage to extort from taxpayers.
The truth is that taxing tobacco is just another government scam to scare people with a threat of some sort and use that fear to screw them out of more their earnings.
You’re talking about hypocrisy. Statists don’t care about hypocrisy.
There was a John Hopkins University study of those who had died of lung cancer. Of those who had smoked at least a pack a day for 25 years or more the ones who quit died at a higher rate than those who continued to smoke.
Are the politicians condemning a greater number to die than they are saving, sort of like the DDT ban?
So Durbin isn’t banning tobacco?
Addicting or not, it’s a personal decision to start - or quit.
I smoked for 30 years. Three packs a day for the last 10 or so. I quit cold turkey. No sympathy for those that think they have an issue with quitting.
72 hours folks. If you can last that long you got it made.
I believed this for years. And then just a year or two ago there was a thread here on FR from India where a couple of Indian doctors wrote a paper on the same thing. Now you say John Hopkins has seen this too.
Almost makes me want to start again :-)
A few years ago, a friend of mine and his wife decided to quit together. They were in their early 40s and decided to live "better" and went on this huge health kick.
Three years later she was dead of a very aggressive lung cancer.
Irrelevant to the issue at hand. Besides, if you eliminate big-gov't poverty programs none of the things Newt describes would be happening.
Of course...society has zero duty to protect it’s children. None. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em.
That’s four and counting. What’s the limit?
So parents are chopped liver then?
Whatever you say.
“3,500 x 365 = 12.7 million..a year..I call BullSh%t !”
I call it right along with you. This is a statistic like the government used to tell us how many people were becoming homeless every day back in the late 1980s. Using their figure, I think it was said that by 1992 or 1993 everyone in the country would be homeless.
Government numbers are pure fiction used to stimulate emotions to get people to go down the wrong path. After all, emotions are easier than logic.
My mother had 5 siblings plus her parents, for a total of 7. All except her smoked, drank and raised hell in general. She lead a very healthy Christian life. They all died between 85 and 89.
Her nephew, my cousin, quit at age sixty. He did of lung cancer at age sixty-one. His mother, my aunt and my mother’s older sister, quit when she was 88. She died of lung cancer at 89.
Of course these are just antidotal but they were in my small circle of relatives. I have smoked for 56 years and feel great and am in great shape as far as I know. All medical test and x-rays come out great.
As always with government, it is about money and control, nothing more.
OK...There are about 32 million kids 10-18. What is your number or estimate for those who tried tobacco for the first time? 12 million? 10 million? 1 million? Zero?
You are being played by socialists and can't even see it.
You are being played by the addicts and can’t even see it.
Huh???????????
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