Editor's Note: This article is an exercise in critical thinking. The author attempts to deconstruct 49 "false" assertions he finds in the law and make a case for Obama to veto it. As one editor put it, "something doesn't smell right about this article." We leave this for you to decide. Has the author given you good and sufficient reason for the bill to be vetoed? Please comment.
All Bad Legislation comes wearing a halo. That's how about 60 years of Reefer Madness drug war atrocities began. The just-passed law (not signed yet) giving the FDA power to "regulate tobacco" is not what mainstream media, or public officials tell us. This is Reefer Madness II, concocted by the same industries who did RM I...important whether or not one cares about "smoking" of any plant.
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Forty Nine Reasons for Obama Not to sign the FDA "tobacco" bill---
Every one of the 49 "findings" that justify the just-passed FDA "tobacco regulation" bill have problems...some quite basic. That the legislation is about control of tobacco, not control of manufacturers of cigarettes, is only one of endless rhetorical oddities.
This is far from being just about “smoking”, pro or con. It concerns matters relating to pesticides, chlorine and dioxins, non-organic agriculture, the “war on organics”, pharmaceuticals, public health, government conflicts of interest with private industries, questionable science, media complicity, threats to Free Speech, intrusions into Indian Sovereignty, states’ rights, industrial evasion of liabilities, insurer evasions of responsibilities for their investment properties (with that link to Single Payer), outright fraud, and the serious threat of yet another prison-filling, costly, and socially-disruptive Prohibition. That this legislation passed both houses of Congress tells us that members either did not read it, or that they are complicit in protecting the cigarette cartel, including pesticide providers, dioxin-producing chlorine interests, and more---and their insurers and investors---from potentially historic levels of liabilities. This act ensures continued and even worse health harms, even to the children it purports to protect.
If President Obama signs this, we will learn a lot about where he stands on those matters. At this point, it does not look good.
See the bill at Open Congress:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s982/text
Comments to Introductory “Findings” in Senate Bill 982
“The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act”
1. (The bill says use of tobacco is a “disease”.) Use of anything isn't a Disease. However, many diseases are possible or inevitable from exposures to smoke from any residues of the over 400 registered tobacco pesticides, dioxins from the chlorine pesticides and chlorine-bleached cigarette paper, radiation from the still-legal phosphate tobacco fertilizers, and any number of the untested and often toxic and carcinogenic non-tobacco cigarette additives.
"The nation's children" have also been exposed to this stuff as young children and even as fetuses, by way of their unprotected, un-informed, and insufficiently-warned mothers who smoked what they thought, and were told, was tobacco or just tobacco.
This legislation starts off with a gross inaccurate statement, and builds on that.
2 (“tobacco products” cause various diseases.) A consensus may exist within Chlorine and Corporate Insurance adjuncts of the "medical communities" that nature's own tobacco plant is the primary culprit...but they conveniently overlook that their own chlorine, and the resultant dioxins, and the pesticide residues as found on tobacco products, are already known causes of cancer, heart disease, and "other serious adverse health effects" ...many of which are impossible to be caused by smoke from any natural plant.
3. (Nicotine is addictive.) Nicotine may be addictive, but the important matter is...what one is addicted to, and if that is harmful. Nicotine is certifiably safe...as per many approved nicotine delivery products.
But, if that nicotine attracts users to untold number of industrial tobacco pesticide residues, radiation from certain fertilizers, and any of about 1400 untested and often toxic/carcinogenic non-tobacco additives, that is an different matter.
Nicotine just happens to also be medicinal, a point ignored in this bill. It's been long used for appetite suppression, alertness, stress relief, and digestive relief...and it is now known (as Big Pharm well knows) to be a symptomatic reliever for symptoms of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's...and as an anti-blood-clotting agent...and more. This Food and Drug Administration appears not to know of the drug aspects of the very substance it will “regulate”. Would it not be fine if the Pharms could take this public domain natural medicine from the public...for free? Correct answer is...Not.
* This is not to mention that all the numerous additives, be they lethal or benign, add to the addiction. One experiences Withdrawal from anything one becomes accustomed to if it is withdrawn. A typical cigarette is perhaps the most multi-additive product on the shelves. For officials who let that happen, for decades, to now pretend to oppose "addiction" is appalling.
4. (Under-age users of “tobacco products”) They are not necessarily "tobacco products", and the attempt to seem "concerned" about health of young people is patently absurd and contemptible...noting that this government has permitted chlorine substances, pesticides and bleached paper, for starters, that produce dioxin which is particularly harmful to children and young people---not to mention fetuses and pregnant mothers.
5. (Advertising) Yes...ads do contribute to use...by even the Anti-Smoking ads that make it "bad" and therefore "cool" to be rebellious... and to keep the idea of smoking Front and Center in young peoples' eyes.
Again...who checked, and who says the cigarettes contain any tobacco? Even "CSI" in Diddlydink, Pennsylvania, would check to see what the cigarette in question was made of. Not U.S. Congress...or the FDA. They seem to actually believe the claims and implications of the most famously deceptive industry on the planet.
* This and other provisions about ads are quite threatening to Constitutional Speech Protections. Even labeling products in a truthful, verifiable way (i.e. Contains No Pesticides, or Contains No Burn Accelerants, or Contains no Non-Tobacco Substances, or even Tobacco Only)...would be illegal. Truth illegal?
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