| Home May 1998 -> The Case Against Big Tobacco |
I don't smoke. I don't like going to smog-filled bars and coming home reeking of cigarettes. When a cigarette is lit, I can smell that mixture of sulfurous matchhead, burning paper, and tobacco ash from across a room.
I can smell hypocritical bullshit from a lot farther away, however, and the bumper crop of state-sanctioned lawsuits against the tobacco companies are lousy with the stench.
The monetary damages that the states are seeking stem from the medical costs of caring from people with tobacco related diseases. So far so good, but individual lawsuits looking for these damages have been thrown out time and time again for a simple reason. Everyone knows smoking will kill you. This has not been a big secret for close to fifty years.
Cigarettes are a legal product. If the states cared so damn much about the health costs, they should have changed that status. If they want to sue someone, how about two generations of lawmakers who accepted money from lobbyists, allowed the tobacco companies to operate without FDA oversight, and then lined the coffers of state treasuries with taxes on each and every carton sold?
The states also point to deceitful marketing practices. Well, what other kinds of marketing practices are there?
What really killed the tobacco companies, though, was that they targeted children in their advertising. 1950s Communists got a fairer deal than anyone accused today of threatening The Children. Enough already, it makes me sick.
Joe Camel never convinced any kid to smoke. Peer pressure, and the fact that smoking will piss off parents and teachers convinces kids to pick up a cigarette. All Joe Camel does is give them a brand to choose.
Forget about getting rid of the Marlboro man, get rid of Saturday morning cartoons. Television is much better and more persistent in getting kids to become consumers of everything from soft drinks to toothpaste.
I'm looking at what I've written here, and as much as I am pissed off, I don't know that I've conveyed my thoughts well. I may have been incoherent.
Let me end with this: if the tobacco companies are guilty of selling a legal product that is harmful to the nation's health after long and repeated consumption and directing marketing towards children, where does that leave McDonald's ?
Just a thought.
Last Updated: 19 May 1998
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