This past Friday, Congress smacked down the cigarette industry. Having raised taxes on tobacco earlier this year, a new bill allows the FDA to regulate tobacco advertising, banning terms such as "lite" and "low tar" along with ads that may "suggest" that certain cigarettes are not as bad as other ones. It bans sponsorship of sporting and entertaining events and makes the warning labels even bigger than they were. (But still short of the European-style fire and brimstone warnings.)
The bill passed relatively easily but was not without controversy. Congressman Steve Buyer of Indiana did his best to bungle the issue and actually compared smoking lettuce to smoking tobacco saying "it's not the nicotine that kills, it's the smoke!"
A quick search shows 600 different ingredients
in cigarettes, including 43 carcinogenic compounds. Lettuce meanwhile
has one ingredient (lettuce) and one carcinogenic compound -- caffeic acid. Also, as has been pointed out by many people, there are no reports of mouth cancer from chewing lettuce.
Obama
plans to sign the bill, even as he's struggling to break the habit
himself. Last week, his Press Secretary Robin Gibbs deftly avoided a question
about whether Obama still smokes, saying, "I think the president
would likely tell you, as I think anybody would who has smoked or been addicted to smoking, that it is a
lifelong struggle ... Struggling
with a nicotine addiction is something that happens every day."
Maybe Gibbs should suggest that the president switch to lettuce.
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"A quick search shows 600 different ingredients in cigarettes, including 43 carcinogenic compounds"
That's a lie right there. Didn't you even read your own link!?
"Cigarette smoke contains over 4,000 chemicals, including 43 known cancer-causing (carcinogenic) compounds "
Steve Buyer is the recipient of the largest amount of tobacco money of any Congressman in the history of Indiana. He is especially favored by Smokeless Tobacco PACs. He is nothing but a spokesperson for his corporate donors. He's the same guy who said we should use nuclear weapons in Afghanistan and who lied to Congress that he had been called to active duty in Iraq and then took a 3 week leave of absence at his home.
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