Up In Smoke

So President Clinton is ready to take measures to limit tobacco advertising and to classify nicotine as an addictive drug, eh? Bravo, I say! It may be a politically convenient move for him, but whatever the ulterior motive, the results should such legislation be passed can only be positive.
There are already people railing against Clinton’s proposed anti-tobacco initiative, but these people don’t seem to realize that they are not the targets of Clinton’s proposition. The National Guard isn’t going to be barging into every home to pluck cigarettes out of the mouths of unsuspecting citizens. The beneficiaries of Clinton’s actions will be the future. The initiative would curb advertising for tobacco products, limit or prohibit tobacco sponsorship of sporting events, remove cigarette vending machines from some public places, and stiffen nationwide regulations against the sale of tobacco products to minors.
Is anyone missing this? This legislation is for the next generation, your children. It will make it more difficult and less desirable for your kids to go out and take up an unhealthy, unattractive, costly and destructive habit. Who in their right minds, in all good conscience as a parent, can say, “Yes, I want my child to go get a pack of cigarettes and start smoking”? Who, even if you’re smokers, can even suggest that they want their children to have that option?
It may indeed be a freedom curbed, but medical studies have shown for years that it’s simply a “freedom” to kill yourself gradually. The tobacco industry has tried time and again to manufacture studies to counter those findings, but the tobacco industry has too vested an interest in its own profits and cannot be relied upon to provide truthful results in such a study.
I have an easier time letting Jack Kervorkian off the hook than I do the tobacco industry. At least “Doctor Death” is under the impression that he’s helping someone. I doubt that anyone can sanely entertain that illusion with regards to cigarette manufacturers.
Among the opposition to Clinton’s tobacco regulations are the farmers who harvest the tobacco, some of whom are heirs of a long line of tobacco producers. If these people with all of their experience with their products are concerned about becoming unemployed, perhaps they should turn their talents and knowledge to helping research cures to the addiction from which so many suffer.

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