Posted on 02/09/2007 4:35:32 PM PST by SheLion
WASHINGTON -- Bipartisan legislation to give the federal Food and Drug Administration regulatory control over tobacco products may be introduced next week.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesdispatch.com ...
If cigarettes are so dangerous, why not just make them illegal all together like marijuana or heroin, rather than regulating them?
I can just see me now driving to East Baltimore – guy in hoodie comes up to my car – “so you want some crack, some smack?” I answer, “No I want you to hook me up with a carton of Virginia Slims Menthol Lites”. Just another day in the victory on the war on drugs.
Cigarettes, trans fats, spanking, what kind of car I drive or light bulb I use; everything is being regulated and increasingly I believe it has nothing to do with the government’s concern about our welfare but their way of conditioning us to blindly and obediently accept the loss of liberty in the name of “it’s for your own good”.
If George Owell was alive today he might say: “I wrote 1984 as criticism of Totalitarianism – not as a how to manual.”
And you are no better than Waxman either, asserting a divine right to something that does not belong to you alone.
I don't know much about pneumonia but a little Googling turns up: Surgeon General's 2004 Report on the Health Consequences of Smoking, Chapter 4. According to this, smokers are three times more likely to get pneumonia (see pages 434 and 435). Couldn't tell from this whether they're that much more likely to die of pneumonia.
The 2 smokers I mentioned died within 48 hours of entering the hospital. From what I understand, they didn't appear to have serious symptoms before collapsing and taken to the hospital. Supposedly one got sent home from work for being tired. She collapsed later that night.
I don't know what form of pneumonia they died of. but I suspect smoking contributed to their early departure..
Copy me that, but replace "smokers" with "vegeterians". and "smoking" with "vegetarianism".
I had a customer (let's just say that I'm a pimp and a drug dealer for the sake of argument) whose husband died of pneumonia 3 months ago. He was 85 years old. He smoked 2 packs of Camel unfiltered since age 14. The doctors said the fact that he smoked and his lungs were not in the best of shape made him difficult to treat.
Take it for what its worth. The funny (sad) part is he will go down in the computers as another "tobacco related mortality".
clarification: That was 2 packs/day of Camel unfiltered. You know what I meant.
Copy me that, but replace "vegetarians" with "alcoholics" and "vegetarianism" with "alcoholism".
I wouldn't rule out vegetarianism, but according to the literature smokers and drinkers have higher risks.
For what?
A happier lifestyle, free of trying to impose their preferences on others?
Dropping dead from pneumonia..
OK, he died of a smoking-related illness and he was older than life expectancy. The stats say the average smoker dies 14 years younger than the average non-smoker, if the CDC is right. Say life expectancy is 78 nowadays. Smokers therefore die on average at 64. So your smoker died 20 years later than expected. You've got to figure there's some luckless smoker out there who died 20 years earlier than 64, to keep the average at 64. So some poor soul out there died at 44 due to smoking. Of course, this is a bit silly, but it has to be true that some die earlier and some later than the average.
I don't think you are able to drop dead from pneumonia.
However, it is becoming increasingly likely that one is likely to drop dead from busybodyism.
You've summed it up very well. How can anyone disagree?
If you want to live longer than quit smoking, eat right, exercise and don't drink like a fish just because you saw one of those beer commercials on TV with women in skimpy bikinis telling you it's cool. (That will be a thing of the past BTW if the social engineering experiment continues on it's current pace)
Fast food ads from McDonalds and Burger King will seem unusual in 30 years. Just like tobacco company commercials on TV seem anachronistic today.
How else are liberals going to prevent their Universal Healthcare plan from going broke?
Waxman is such a fine upstanding man, isn't he?
Please add me to your ping list.
No it's not. You are just a pawn in the Big Government sponsored/Grant Junky fueled social engineering experiment like smokers are. They (anti-tobacco) are just taking advantage of the prejudice that they have in part instilled (through a PR campaign) in you to accomplish their goals.
Don't believe me, scroll down to the bottom of my homepage and read their playbook...the 93 ASSIST study. You've been used.
What do you like to do Ditter? Drink, gamble, porn, Scrabble? Maybe you are like Charles Engels from "Little House on the Prairie" and have no vices. Good for you.
If not, YOU ARE NEXT.
I am a 66 year old artist who doesn't drink, smoke, gamble,like porn or play scrabble. I have been avoiding smokers ever since I left home at age 17, that would be 1957, when EVERYONE smoked every where. I am NOT a government pawn no matter if you like to think I am. There are lots of us out here like me and you are on the losing end.
Sure, I do.
Some people don't like the smell of tobacco smoke, some people do.
You have smoked for 40 years every place you have gone.
Make that 45 years.
you have been imposing your preference to smoke on others who didn't want to
People who don't want to be around me are free to go elsewhere.
Thank you for clearing that up for me. I appreciate your candor. I really mean it.
If you don't mind, there are two more questions:
1. You're an artist AND a Republican? Wow, most artistic people are left wingers. What kind of art do you do?
2. I'll ask this before somebody else does in a more antagonistic obnoxious way: You are 66 and have been exposed to SHS involuntarily for your entire life no matter how much you tried to avoid it. How are you still alive if SHS is as dangerous as Sarin Gas?
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