Grrrrrr!

I gave it up 15 years ago, you poofter junkies.

I have just been trying to get some information on some of the apparent 599-odd ingredients in a ciggie; I was going to suggest that it wouldn’t be a bad thing if most of them except nicotine were removed but then the page wouldn’t load, so I went out and had a fag instead.

Funny thing, what you said about it being 1 mg a day for smoking cigarettes.

Last time I looked on the side of a pack of cigarettes it said something like .1 mg per cigarette for “ultra-lights”, one of the terminologies to be banned under the new FDA programme.

However, when one looks at the nicotine products in the pharmaceutical aisle one sees them being 2 mg to 4 mg (gums and lozenges) and 7 mg, 14 mg and 28 mg per patch.

So that is to say they are claiming nicotine is a health hazard, demoralizing the use of a product producing .1 mg of nicotine in favor of pharmaceutical products producing 2 mg, 4 mg, 7 mg, 14 mg and 28 mg of nicotine instead.

Missing in the US propaganda machine today are any stories on the Senator Lautenberg pharmaceutical lobbyist connections as well as those same connections between pharmaceutical giants and the newly appointed heads of CDC and the HHS Department.

Although Obama was reported to have been seen smoking according to the DC based “The Hill” newspaper less than a month ago, with passage of this legislation the propaganda in the US has suddenly changed from “Obama who was smoking” to “Obama who once smoked” – at the stroke of midnight through a stroke of the pen – this has now been re-written, in less than one month’s time.

Amazing how the US believes in the SHS studies based on statistical hearsay while ignoring the actual findings on one of the largest studies ever done to date (BMJ 2006) which shows there was no significant if any correlations between SHS and purported disease.

Even the infamous recent SHS/heart-attack studies were proven cherry picked and inconclusive, yet it’s the Bible upon which the secular drive comes to initiate the bans, to denormalize use of a legal product, to now put it into the hands of one of the most corruptible agencies in all of DC, the FDA.

FDA complicity with the pharma-industrial-complex has lead to untold health hazards and deaths resulting from pharma products rushed to market with unfortunate side effects, such as death in the case of many statins, pushed under the table – since FDA relies heavily on fees by pharmaceuticals to fund the FDA.

With the new legislation in the US, tobacco companies will be reponsible for providing financial support, fees, to the FDA now too, as is the already case with pharmaceuticals. And as comes payment of fees from private industry to a government agency, so comes corruption, the fitting of statistical data to match profitable marketing campaigns.

One can only bet that FDA will soon be making cigarettes quite legal and smoking normalized, to the profit of FDA and mainly Philip Morris both as they have already done the same with, as some might reasonably argue, definitely dangerous pharmaceutical products whose effects are demonstrated on a per individual case basis, not on the manipulations of statistical databases to provide possibilities as in the case of tobacco.

In the absolutist world of black and white, tobacco is evil, pharmaceuticals are Godly, as it stands currently.

There is a difference between supposed and possible diseases and death based on statistical manipulations like those biased against legal tobacco products and the actual cases of death resulting from pharmaceutical products which can be traced directly back to their source.

The US legislation, complete with the full cooperation, support and propaganda provided by the US media, which depends today on vast advertising revenues from pharma products (print and TV both in the States) will thus continue to lead one to believe that it is big and evil tobacco the cause of all our worldy problems based on statistical possibilities and lead one away from visualizing what has been going on for decades now, in complacency between an FDA funded by pharma giant fees, that genuinely dangerous products, sometimes for concocted but marketable illusions of illness are left unchecked.

When is the last time anyone complained about cartoon advertisements on American TV that normalizes to children the idea of taking prescription drugs on a regular basis for whatever petty reasons made believable, yet the smoke-screen case against tobacco provides the distraction upon which the pharma-industrial-complex gets away with it, in broad plain daylight view, no questions asked.

Phillip Morris is just jumping on the same bandwagon that the pharma-industrial-complex jumped on years ago in getting its product out there.

And if I sound in defence of tobacco, bear in mind I do not smoke, but to each their own, in a free-choice society.

There are just some illogical perceptions being bandied about and hypocrisies being ignored by media propaganda that do not add up to me, is all I am saying.

I suppose the quantities of Nicotine content in pharmaceutical products differ due to the variation in absorption rate via the lungs (fag) compared to the the digestive system (gum).

Can’t see the problem really, why not ban Nicotine?

No one has a problem banning Speed, Crack or Heroin why not the the most addictive of the lot?

Nicotine and the other lethal chemicals it helps deliver kill 54 million people annually and even though its deadliness has been proven, repeatedly, it is still sold worldwide due the funding the industry has provided politicians for the last hundred years.

Thing is reducing the tar and nicotine in fags has been happening for a while in Europe so if anything the US will be blaming us for the idea.

I’ll see if I can dig out some images of packets with 14mg tar and more nicotine than they currently do.

Anyone got a light?

I went for so long without lighting it, all this talk of nicotine was the straw that broke the Camel’s back.

Posh!

Just because I have Lambert the Butler?

Well, I’ve got Benson who does my Hedges but he’s no Marlboro Man, that’s for sure.

Ms Raccoon, you light up my life.

Sobranie Cocktail, anyone?

Now your Balkan on the ridiculous Glo.

Are you keeping tabs on me?

Good. That would be a right drag.

Annoyed at being out-pun, Smudd shoots Saul a flinty look…

I’ve had to turn to Mr Smudd for ideas: “Oi! Get out yer thinkin’ Cap,Stan!” Or words to that effect.

I’ll count to Number 10 but after that I’m due back at the Embassy. Hope you manage to get all your nozzles balanced back into the lid.

I’m buggered if I can think of those exotic cigarillo type fags. Probably for the best.( the one’s with the built in holder).

Good night Glo, you certainly light this place up. No one else is a patch on you.

I’ll say again, I did not inhale!

Excellent article Anna. Shame some of your commenters failed to get the point, as you nailed it handsomely.

Rightwinggit: Who gives a fuck if you gave up. Well done you and all that, but some don’t want to. Are you an arbiter of their choice to enjoy a legal product? If so, that makes you an authoritarian wanker in my book, so fuck off.

Cato: You too, cunt.

As Anna has correctly identified, this is a clever ploy by Philip Morris to ring-fence their market share while appearing to be generous to anti-tobacco. It is also an ingenous way for the righteous to show they are doing something while surreptitiously … err … not doing anything.

Plus Tobacco Free Kids get a nice backhander too.

Everything hunky-dory then. Except, as Anna has pointed out, nothing has changed except that more fags will be sold.

For a libertarian blog (IIRC), there seem to be a whole lot of ill-informed, bigoted and prejudicial morons posing as libertarians here.

Perhaps the WHO should call another pandemic to that effect.

I wish I lived in a more civilised country like Spain where one has the choice of a smoking or non-smoking bar,(they still treat people like adults ove there).It’s easy to tell which are the non-smoking bars – they’re all empty! Aaaahhhh……lovely tabs…….although I think the guy in the picture is talking about something else entirely!?

Dick P; It’s called having a sense of humour.
I’ll take the piss out of anyone, including myself.

Dick,

If you can’t say it without swearing perhaps you haven’t thought it out properly, i’m not saying swearing doesn’t have a time and place but don’t you find an argument much more refreshing when it is delivered with articulation and wit?

Janes,

I am Indeed a reformed smoker who is all for smoking reform. Personal choice is one thing proliferation of a deadly disease inducing cancer is another. Very few smokers advocate the health benefits of smoking, rather they retreat to a cocoon of ignorance and reel out a tired defence of ‘my choice’ or ‘I could quit if I wanted’ when confronted with indisputable evidence. However, if you wish to smoke- that is fine, in 10 years there will be many fewer of you to complain.

Janes you are indeed a brainwashed anti smoker who must have thought very little of yourself when you smoked. If anyone gives up smoking, drinking or eating to excess then that is great but please don’t trip out the usual tripe about “proliferation of a deadly disease inducing cancer.” Yes, cancer can be a deadly disease but why is all cancers laid at tobacco’s door? Name three people who had on their death certificate that they died because they smoked? You can’t because they say that the death was ’smoking related.’ It doesn’t matter if the deceased was overweight, or lived in a built up area where they were constantly inhaling a deadly coctail of Diesel and Petrol fumes for the best part of their lives. Tobacco smoke ‘toxins’ are measured in nanograms, picograms and femtograms, and many can’t even be detected in these amounts! Diesel and Petrol can and have been found to be at much higher levels as to be quantifiable as true human carcinogens. Second Hand Smoke (SHS) does the non smoker no harm at all.

I think you Janes are ignorant. Your smugness at giving up tobacco makes you think you have the right to denormalise smokers for their pastime or comfort, whatever you want to think it is to them, and can only come from your weakness as a person who has only done one simple act in their lives, given up smoking, the very thing you castigate…If you can why can’t every other smoker, how come you are so special and we smokers are so weak? Because they like smoking, that’s why! And no, there is no ‘indisputable evidence’ because I, and many others, including scientists, despute it!

I used to be tolerant of people, no matter of their lifestyle, but since the smoking ban and the onslaught of bigoted lies by the anti smoker I am tolerant no more, it’s time to fight back!

Oops, I read it wrong, it was Zak replying to Dick and Janes, my apologies Janes, please do forgive me cos I should have been addressing that Zak, so If you are reading this Zak, did I mention Zak? You are a pillock. Lol.

Couldn’t read the right name on a blog, think i’ll take my scientific opinion from someone who doesn’t make such an easy mistake. I can see how the bold font fooled you.

You are right though, smoking related deaths are rife just like bullet and vehicle related deaths; they really have nothing to do with cigarettes, guns and cars.

“Couldn’t read the right name on a blog, think i’ll take my scientific opinion from someone who doesn’t make such an easy mistake. I can see how the bold font fooled you.”

No Zak, take your scientific opinions to Freedom To Choose, there you will see ’scientific evidence’ that has been gone through with a fine toothed comb and have found glaring holes that do not add up with the propganda of the moneygrubbers like ASH et al. Or you could just follow the money trail itself.

(After looking at many blogs, with different formats, I think it is very easy to reply to the wrong person on a blog but that does in no way suggest that I do not know about a given subject until it is debated in earnest.)

“You are right though, smoking related deaths are rife just like bullet and vehicle related deaths; they really have nothing to do with cigarettes, guns and cars.”

That last statement is Quixotic at best and you seemed to have pulled it out of thin air.

I haven’t had a chance to look at all the links yet but as I mentioned in an earlier post, there is a very big difference between eating something and smoking it. Your digestive system is designed to handle volatile substances your respiratory system is not.

However, I am not a doctor – it would be nice to get a comment from one or two.

You should also bear in mind that chemicals when slightly altered, lets say by raising the temperature to 700 degrees centigrade… can take on very different properties. Take salt for instance, harmless, consumed by billions daily. Split the compound in two and you are left with a pair of elements, sodium and chlorine; two things you would neither want to eat or smoke.