Posted on 09/23/2002 1:49:31 PM PDT by SheLion
BURLINGTON TOWNSHIP- In many local pharmacies, customers can purchase everything from cold medicine to candy bars. They can also buy cigarettes, a practice Dr. Vernon Daly wants stopped.
He says tobacco kills 14,000 New Jersey residents annually and has no place in a health setting.
"If pharmacies today say they won't sell tobacco because of health reasons, a lot more people would stop smoking," said Daly yesterday at a Celebration of Tobacco-Free Pharmacies Friday in front of Rancocas Hospital on Sunset Road.
Daly is the president of the Heureka Center for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in Burlington Township.
The seminar was organized to recognize pharmacies that don't carry tobacco products and to encourage residents to pressure the pharmacies that do.
"The time has come when we tell the pharmacies that they can no longer fill the prescription for tobacco addiction," said Daly to an audience of about 20.
The program was part of a joint effort by the Heureka Center and NJBreathes, a coalition of organizations in the state that works to curb the effects of smoking in the state.
As part of the event, Daly handed out copies of the second edition of the New Jersey Tobacco Free Pharmacy Directory. The directory lists 16 independent pharmacies in Burlington County that do not sell tobacco products.
Statewide, about 141 pharmacies are tobacco free, Daly said.
Larry Downs, director of NJBreathes, encouraged residents to protest at the grassroots level at their local pharmacies. "Why should you be able to get your chemotherapy medicines in the same place you can get a cancer-causing agent?" he asked.
At the close of the program, Daly encouraged representatives from tobacco-free pharmacies in the state to display "Tobacco Free Network" signs in their store windows.
He also asked them to display in their shops anti-smoking posters.
I'm sorry, but that was mild compared to what I could have said.
But we get a little tired of other Conservatives coming in here and bashing us. We hear it enough from the anti's. We don't need to hear it from our own kind.
You don't know much about addiction either, it appears.
Tobacco is legal. It it were an "addictive drug" as you suggest, it would not have been made legal hundreds of years ago. They would have kept it secret like opium and the like. I have had non-smoking girl friends who can not get up in the morning without their Pepsi. Talk about addiction!
No, we'll take our business elsewhere.
And what about that fat man taking the Fast Food chain to court because he is addicted to their food and it made him gain 300 lbs? Addiction comes in all colors.
From the Surgeon General:
Health & Science: Surgeon general warns obesity may overtake tobacco as leading preventable killer
Thank you, Joe.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is not a respected non profit, it is under the control of left wing extremists who fund programs that further their social causes. Single payer health, anti evil tobacco companies. The AMA has been under the control of the same philosophical wackos for a while now. Read their journal, its gone down the tubes promoting junk science to justify their cause.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and AMA working with 44 states to take away smoking rights.
By Jove! You might be onto something!
I took notice of Nicorette Gum in our drug store awhile back: $49.95!!!!!!!!
Exactly. There you go! That's what we do. Go somewhere else.
Hardcore tobacco users
I love to smoke. That makes me hardcore? I've never been hardcore in my life until I became a Conservative. Heh!
Tobacco user, like alcoholics and drug addicts
Although I do resent being lumped in with alcoholics and drug addicts. At least my smoking doesn't make me wacky in the head or not know the next morning what I did the night before. And I can still drive safely while smoking and not worry about killing anyone of the HWY.
Please don't lump us in with druggies.
What is this guy smoking??
How many cigarettes would that be?
I dunno.........but it's all nuts!
Sorry. Don't mean to sound testy. I just get my back up. So many other Conservatives come in and bash us. It just gets tiring.
I just read a good letter by one gal:
The decision to use tobacco is an informed, legal, adult choice.
It is not the business of government, health professionals, nor any one else to make the personal determination of what is an 'acceptable risk' on behalf of others when it comes to the use of a legal product.
I thought that was pretty good and nails it!
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