Let me tell you what’s radical Cigarette “Industry”

by YankeeJim | January 31, 2012 at 02:38 pm

70 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

Let me tell you what’s radical Cigarette “Industry”

My Grandfather was a tobacco addict, hooked on Camel cigarettes all of his life. He was a chain smoker living inside a cozy house filled with smoke. My Grandmother was a snuff user. Snuff is tobacco powder that is inhaled through the nose and is also addictive. She was raised in tobacco country in Virginia where people like think tobacco is a crop.

My aunt and my mother died young from cancer that I attribute to their living in that environment because in our house, my Mother forced my Dad to stop smoking.

I have watched friends and family members die from lung cancer.

Treating tobacco as a farm crop is ignorant and irresponsible given what we know about it. There should be no subsidy for tobacco farmers. In fact, it should be illegal.

Advertisements of the public service nature can’t be too radical. Radical is making an industry of tobacco.

Want to grow something, try organic fruits and vegetables as we can’t get enough of that.

“Business Group: Cigarette Warnings Are 'Radical'

Tue, 01/31/2012 - 12:08pm

Michael Felberbaum, AP Tobacco Writer

Get today's manufacturing headlines and news - Sign up now!

RICHMOND, Virginia (AP) — The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is weighing in on a lawsuit over graphic cigarette warning labels, saying the federal government has no legitimate authority to take space on a tobacco company's packaging or advertising to persuade consumers not to buy the product.

One label depicts a corpse with its chest sewn up and the words "Smoking can kill you." Another label shows a healthy pair of lungs beside a yellow and black pair with a warning that smoking causes fatal lung disease

The pro-business lobbying group filed a friend of the court brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington late Monday in the lawsuit brought by some of the largest U.S. tobacco companies, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Lorillard Tobacco Co., challenging the Food and Drug Administration's plan to require the new labels be placed on cigarette packs later this year.

Altria Group Inc., parent company of the nation's largest cigarette maker, Philip Morris USA, which makes top-selling Marlboros, is not a part of the lawsuit.

A U.S. District Court judge in November blocked the labels while deciding whether they violate the companies' free speech rights, ruling that it is likely the cigarette makers would succeed in a lawsuit. The FDA has appealed that decision and oral arguments are set for April.

In its filing, the group that represents the interests of more than 3 million companies and professional organizations in the U.S. wrote that that allowing the warning labels would be a "radical departure from traditional government efforts to regulate speech insofar as they force commercial enterprises to disparage the very products that they are lawfully marketing."

The chamber added that the labels are "expressly designed to provoke adverse emotional reactions and inspire fear above and beyond any factual disclosures related to the hazards associated with smoking."

The tobacco companies have questioned the constitutionality of the labels, saying the warnings don't simply convey facts to inform people's decision whether to smoke but instead force the cigarette makers to display government anti-smoking advocacy more prominently than their own branding. They also say that changing cigarette packaging will cost millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, the FDA has said that the public interest in conveying the dangers of smoking outweighs the companies' free speech rights.

The FDA last June approved nine new warning labels that companies are to print on the entire top half of cigarette packs, front and back. The new warnings, each of which includes a number for a stop-smoking hotline, also must constitute 20 percent of cigarette advertising, and marketers are to rotate use of the images.”