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-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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"On the surface, it sounds irresponsible, but to flourish in a rapidly changing world, you actually need to make more mistakes. Fail quickly. Fail often. If you do something and it
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"There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction -- every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and that excitement at about a million miles an hour."
-- Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar |
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| Whither Tobacco |
| Friday, June 19, 2009 |
Last time, in our weekly installment of Who's Hot & Who's Snot, we here at Numb Trolleybus lauded what we considered Congress's progress in regulating the stain on society that is tobacco. My friend Jerry, who is also participating in our 30 Days of Blog campaign, responded to our post with one of his own over at The Doghouse. In his post, he correctly asserted that our early colonial economy would not have survived if not for both tobacco and cotton, and that the United States continued to prosper as well as it did for the next century thanks in great part to the very tobacco plant we now vilify.
He's not wrong on any particular point; you'll have to forgive me, though, if I don't shed any tears for this dubious "friend" of centuries past, and also if I don't feel I owe a debt of gratitude, either. If we were talking about my grandmother, whose crass, offensive attitudes are greatly overshadowed by her sizable contributions to my education, then I'd be much less inclined to spread criticism.
But it's not an embarrassing family member, it's an industry that knowingly sells deadly, addictive chemicals, the health hazards of which it denied for decades. Past economic gains are cold comfort; if that was the only consideration, we'd still have slavery.
Like Jerry, I usually come down on the side of individual freedoms, and up to a point, that includes the right to freely put into your body whatever you choose. Unfortunately, in the case of smokers, it's not just their bodies they're poisoning with these chemicals, it's bystanders' bodies as well, and that's where I draw the line. Secondhand smoke is a documented reality, and it's largely unavoidable even in outdoor settings. I can, then, potentially suffer and die from the same cancers that kill smokers -- thanks entirely to someone else's smoking habit.
In addition, they have deliberately marketed their addictive products to the most vulnerable members of our society in the hopes of "getting them early," and then, when it's lawsuit time forty years down the road, falling back on the argument that you're responsible for what goes into your body. Well, when this type of strategy becomes the basis for your very livelihood, you can't expect people to take your side when the government steps in to regulate the poisons you peddle. And believe me, they will step in.
This is a partial look at why I was so grateful that the tobacco industry will be subject to a whole slew of new regulations in the future, and I didn't feel the need to give tobacco a hug afterwards. Listen, the U.S. economy no longer survives on half a dozen industries the way it did back in the day. And although I can't verify this in any quantifiable way, it makes intuitive sense to say that given our advances in technology, refinement, and genetic engineering, smoking today is likely much more dangerous than it was when our country was born. It's fair to say that smoking ain't what it used to be -- it's actually worse.
Yes, people are responsible for their own actions, and that goes for the good people at Philip Morris, Inc. as well. When what you sell kills millions, you will eventually be taken to task for everything you've done to promote it. |
posted by N.T. @ 9:07 PM  |
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| 2 Comments: |
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Nice argument, Heith. I, despise smoke and being around it. We all know how bad it is for you and anyone around secondhand smoke, so I agree--this should have happened long ago.
What I'd like to reiterate from your first post about it is something that i see firsthand every single day. The insane amount of money that is shelled out everyday by taxpayers to pay for health care of tobacco users. It is INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!! I value human life and freedom of choice, but I am sickened when i see the state of people in hospitals fighting diseases and disorders caused by smoking/tobacco use. And it's not limited to lung cancer. Ever heard of COPD? Nasty, nasty condition and a horrible way to die. What about oral/facial cancer? That's not pretty either, and i'm not just talking about how someone looks after sections of their facial structure, muscles and skin are removed and they have skin/bones from their hips/legs grafted to replace it. And the majority of pt's i see fighting these conditions have medicare or no insurance at all.
It's about damn time the government stepped in...it's actually way overdue and not strict enough if you ask me.
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Jerry made a really good argument on this subject in his post as well; I didn't comment on it in particular because it's not squarely on-topic, but essentially what he said was that we shouldn't be paying into the health care system in the first place. I tend to agree with this; I know opinions vary pretty widely, but although I agree, I also don't think it diminishes the case for regulating tobacco. The fact is that we do pay into the health care system even though we shouldn't have to, and the drains smoking inflicts on health care are real. So my position remains the same, even though there are obviously multiple problems to be solved here.
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Nice argument, Heith. I, despise smoke and being around it. We all know how bad it is for you and anyone around secondhand smoke, so I agree--this should have happened long ago.
What I'd like to reiterate from your first post about it is something that i see firsthand every single day. The insane amount of money that is shelled out everyday by taxpayers to pay for health care of tobacco users. It is INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!! I value human life and freedom of choice, but I am sickened when i see the state of people in hospitals fighting diseases and disorders caused by smoking/tobacco use. And it's not limited to lung cancer. Ever heard of COPD? Nasty, nasty condition and a horrible way to die. What about oral/facial cancer? That's not pretty either, and i'm not just talking about how someone looks after sections of their facial structure, muscles and skin are removed and they have skin/bones from their hips/legs grafted to replace it. And the majority of pt's i see fighting these conditions have medicare or no insurance at all.
It's about damn time the government stepped in...it's actually way overdue and not strict enough if you ask me.