"All tobacco should be illegal"

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  • darkwing
    Member
    • Oct 2007
    • 415

    "All tobacco should be illegal"

    I love the assertion in this one that snus is the most dangerous product!:

    Tobacco Should be Made Illegal

    Many U.S. citizens nowadays insist that tobacco products should completely disappear from our marketplace. They call tobacco companies “the merchants of death”, and rightfully so. As tobacco manufacturers now face a decline in sales, due to the fact that people know more about the hazards of cigarettes and therefore smoke less, these corporate monsters come up with new exquisite ways to boost their sales and further spread disease. One of the tricks is to hide nicotine in seemingly harmless products.

    Recently held National Conference on Tobacco or Health in Minneapolis discussed this new strategy of tobacco producers. During the Conference, University of Minnesota tobacco researcher Dorothy Hasukami described to more than 3,000 national anti-tobacco activists and experts his findings of a whole array of new nicotine-containing products on the market.

    The most dangerous of the new products is snus, also known as spitless tobacco - small packets containing nicotine which can be easily held in the mouth. Tobacco marketers promote this product as being less harmful for health and containing less carcinogens that traditional cigars and cigarettes yet producing the same powerful “high” for users since it contains the same amount of nicotine.

    Another invention of tobacco companies is a nicotine-containing lozenge that can be placed under the tongue just like cough drops.

    Hookahs, or water pipes, are also promoted now as a safer way to use tobacco than conventional smoking. Hookah smokers think that tobacco smoke drawn through water is “cleaner”. However, the Conference experts successfully challenged this point of view by presenting evidence that tobacco used in hookahs actually is more dangerous because it contains more tar and more nicotine than tobacco used in cigarettes.

    One more ?great? marketing idea of tobacco producers is to make small flavoured cigars, such as the Swishier or Winchester, and sell them to naive consumers who think that they are getting a “healthier” product. In 2006 alone, more than 4.5 billion of such cigars were sold in the U.S.

    In view of the above, many anti-tobacco activists are wondering why tobacco giants, such as Philip Morris, are still allowed to sell their deadly stuff to U.S. consumers and make big profits. Tobacco products should be regarded as venom, which they are, and should be made illegal, just like contaminated food, opium, crystal meth, and other dangerous drugs and poisons.

    According to the American Cancer Society, tobacco death toll accounts at 430,000 death cases a year, yet tobacco industry is still a highly profitable business in the country. Although a whole range of measures have been implemented in the recent decades to reduce smoking, such as information campaigns educating the U.S. population about hazards of tobacco, or laws prohibiting smoking in restaurants, offices, and other public areas, these measures are not sufficient enough. Tobacco companies are still thriving, and even major lawsuits against them have not diminished their profits.

    Some U.S, citizens, including the participants of the Conference, proposed to take more drastic measures against tobacco corporations. Among the proposed steps are the following:

    1. To impose a high tax on cigarettes, cigars, snus, and other tobacco products. Profits from the increased taxation should be directed to treat tobacco-related diseases. In addition, higher prices should further encourage consumers to quit smoking.

    2. To introduce a law obliging tobacco producers to gradually decrease the amount of nicotine in their products.

    3. After a ten-year period, to require tobacco corporations to stop producing tobacco-containing products.



    Although such proposed measures seem to be fair, their opponents argue that increased tobacco taxation will have a very bad impact on poor and lower-middle-class Americans - the categories of the population that smoke the most. Other say that such drastic measures will be against America’s deeply cherished values of “personal freedom”. In addition, tobacco products cannot be made illegal because governmental officials signed solid contracts with tobacco corporations in exchange for the billions of dollars that tobacco producers pump into the U.S. economy?

    Jimmy Edwards

    Technorati tags: anti-tobacco proposals, new dangerous tobacco products, the National Conference on Tobacco or Health, snus, lozenge, hookah
    Popularity: 16%

    Posted on November 24, 2007
    Filed Under Stop Smoking News
  • The Cook
    Member
    • Aug 2007
    • 166

    #2
    What bullshit...why can't they just leave us be? Classifying nicotine as a toxin is just too much. Prohibit tobacco sales in ten years? No way..

    Comment

    • chainsnuser
      Senior Member
      • Jan 2007
      • 1388

      #3
      Re: "All tobacco should be illegal"

      Originally posted by darkwing
      Popularity: 16%
      That's the fun-part of the article!

      Cheers!

      Comment

      • mwood72

        #4
        To me the big tobacco companies stole the idea of Snus from the Swedish I assume to boost their sales of tobacco with the public smoking bans. Who's to say what they're producing is actually the same as traditional Swedish Snus. The article seems to suggest the big tobacco companies invented Snus but that is not true. I wouldn't use Snus unless it was made in Sweden and complaint to their strict production process rules. The small portions that the big tobacco companies produce would be too small to satisfy me anyway.

        Comment

        • Soft Morning, City!
          Member
          • Sep 2007
          • 772

          #5
          What would be accomplished by making tobacco sales illegal? You'd just drive the whole tobacco market underground. It's not like addicts are just going to look at a newspaper and say, "oh, well they made tobacco illegal... guess I better quit." No. It would be an enormous black market.

          The United States should have figured out by now that making things illegal just doesn't work. Look at marijuana. On the federal level you can still, technically, get 10 years for possession of one joint. But the number of private users of marijuana in the United States is quite massive. Look at meth, look at heroin, look at cocaine... PROHIBITION DOESN'T WORK. It just creates massive, violent black markets and sub-par product.

          Comment

          • Zero
            Member
            • May 2006
            • 1522

            #6
            I left a comment on the site 8)

            http://www.stopsmokingsteps.com/2007...-made-illegal/




            While I can’t vouch for what the American companies are producing, Swedish snus - the real snus, as made in its homeland, is indeed manifestly safer than smoking tobacco in cigarettes. I invite you to study the issue in the many reports written in Swedish medical Journals and, in fact, most recently commented on by the prestigious British medical jounal, The Lancet.

            Contrary to your assertion above, nicotine is not, in and of itself, a terribly harmful substance. It is like caffeine - an alkaloid, commonly found in many vegetables we commonly eat (in the nightshade family - tomatoes, potatoes, etc). It is a stimulant, of course, and it has the hazards which are associated with all stimulants, just as caffeine does, but it is certainly no terrible devil of a chemical. The principal hazard from smoking comes from the inhalation of smoke, not from the nicotine.

            Traditional American and Indian chewing and ‘dip’ tobaccos are carcinogenic not because of the nicotine they contain, but because of the presence of compounds known as Tobacco Specific Nitrosamines (TSNAs) - chemicals produced during the fermentation of the tobacco in the production of these products. Swedish snus, however, is pasteurised and not fermented - a process which produces dramatically lower levels of these TSNAs.

            In fact, the Swedish statistics show that although they have a similar incidence of tobacco use compared to the rest of Europe, their rates of tobacco related cancers and diseases are the lowest of any western nation. Many medical studies suggest that the use of snus in place of cigarettes is directly responsible for this statistic.

            Furthermore, I personally know many people who have quit smoking by switching to snus. All of them have been shocked and amazed at the ease with which they made the switch and all of them are ecstatic to have kicked the smokes.

            The problem with mindless, reactionary, and scientifically unjustifiable sanctions (taxes) arbitrarily placed on these products is that you discourage people from taking a very positive and beneficial route out of their smoking habit - one that would add years to their lives and save millions in medical expenses. All because of an irrational vendetta against “evil tobacco”, regardless of the facts and information at hand.

            I implore you to consider your positions more rationally and to educate yourself on the issues you are so strongly wishing to influence policy with. The best intentions don’t produce the best results if they are driven by misinformation and emotion in place of logic and reason.

            Cheers.

            Comment

            • slatter
              Member
              • Sep 2007
              • 84

              #7
              well if they try they can suck my hairy coin purse.

              Comment

              • lxskllr
                Member
                • Sep 2007
                • 13435

                #8
                Very well written Zero. I doubt it will do much good though. I think with people like that, extreme violence would work better :P

                Comment

                • mwood72

                  #9
                  Nice one Zero! I don't think they'd want a little thing like the facts get in the way of their mass anti-tobacco campaign though

                  Comment

                  • darkwing
                    Member
                    • Oct 2007
                    • 415

                    #10
                    Very clever and well written comment, Zero.

                    Comment

                    • RealmofOpeth
                      Member
                      • May 2007
                      • 407

                      #11
                      did they delete your comment?
                      because I'm not seeing what you wrote in the post above over there...

                      Comment

                      • Kindrd
                        Member
                        • Oct 2007
                        • 266

                        #12
                        Other say that such drastic measures will be against America’s deeply cherished values of “personal freedom”.
                        That wraps it up for me right there. Sad that so many are for banning everything. Personal responsibility is where its at.

                        Comment

                        • Zero
                          Member
                          • May 2006
                          • 1522

                          #13
                          Originally posted by RealmofOpeth
                          did they delete your comment?
                          because I'm not seeing what you wrote in the post above over there...
                          Well, I can see it, but it says: Your comment is awaiting moderation, so maybe someone has to ok it before it goes live?

                          Comment

                          • Gneldre
                            Member
                            • Nov 2007
                            • 15

                            #14
                            I get so pissed off when someone thinks they know what's best for other people. The should either mind their own business or parachute without the parachute.

                            And of course, the main reason they don't like snus, is because they've never tried

                            Comment

                            • mwood72

                              #15
                              Originally posted by Zero
                              Originally posted by RealmofOpeth
                              did they delete your comment?
                              because I'm not seeing what you wrote in the post above over there...
                              Well, I can see it, but it says: Your comment is awaiting moderation, so maybe someone has to ok it before it goes live?
                              Zero - I see they still haven't posted your comprehensive factual reply - I guess it must have scared them off!

                              Comment

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