P&M: Smokes!

Yes, I know I have been down this road before. I am always the one person that takes the side of the "bad tobacco" companies.
And I like it! I have been a smoker for 17 years and I looooove it! I will bitch about smokes til the day I die!

Anyhoo, back to the bitching at hand. I ran accross this today. A federal judge said that and I am quoting here "the nation's top cigarette makers violated racketeering laws, deceiving the public for years about the health hazards of smoking, but said she couldn't order them to pay the billions of dollars the government had sought" Hello! We all know smoking poses some risk but so does walking accross the damn street!

It absolutely kills me when I read shit like this. So its bad for ya! So is fast food, war, peta, and countless other crap I cant keep track of. So why in the hell are cig companies the only "bad" thing that has to advertise against itself? This is insane! Even if I wasnt a smoker, this would still be fornicateed up! So they dont have to pay the billions that the gov wants. Instead they have to write a paper that says we are bad for ya! I dont see a fed judge telling mcdonalds that their food sucks and they have to write a paper to tell you that!

WTF is wrong with America these days? America is supposed to be the land of the free! I am guessing that went down the toilet as the gov has to tell ppl what to do instead of parents or a choice!

well, the perents dOn't do a good job either...don't forget that's always the fault of Rock nRoll, Metall Rap or videogames but never the parents themself when things go down...

smoking has gotten insane in canada to where i live you cant smoke under any type of roof above you and you are damned lucky to be able to smoke anywhere..the only placeu can technically moke now is in ur houes and on the street. its getting pretty insane i wish they would spend their time trying to fix more serious problems then people smoking..like why not pay the thousands of dollars to renovate your city since mine is run down and looks like shit instead they go on a non-smoking rampage

dude its your P&M so ignore this by all means:

you want to, and do, smoke, good for you, you made that choice.
i personally don't smoke and don't desire to. thats my choice, good for me.
other people choosing what they choose, good for them.
and i respect your/other peoples choices.

i can see you would be pissed off at people if they tried to stop you making that choice. i know i would be.
so i could see how government slogans and crap on packets would piss you off. but i also see the fact
that, because of those messages, you KNOW the choice your making... like you KNOW you might get cancer.
so its an informed descision. would everyone know they were so 'bad' if it wasn't written on there?

as for racketeering and the like i dunno... i just think the government are just trying to cover they're collective
arses. if you cross the street and get hit, the person who hit you is responsible. but if you get cancer? who is
responsible then? you, the government or the tobbaco companies/industry?
not to say i don't see your point. but it is a good question.

it bothers me is the limiting of smoking areas, people may not want to have other people smoking near them,
i get that. but thats what smoke free areas were introduced for. now, here (in oz), there are so few areas that
you CAN smoke in that it seems they need smoking areas, just so there is somewhere for smokers to go.
it could start to infring upon smokers' civil rights and freedom and all that.

what really bothers me, is the new government plan that if your smoking related illness needs treatment in
hospital, you will be refused public treatment. so its private health or nothing.

just some food for thought (or fuel for the fire?)
ps. apologies if i offended anyone

yeah i understand what your saying..i knew it as a bad choice from the moment i took my frist smoke but i remember when they used to have places we could smoke now we are all having to crowd together in a tiny area as not to make people mad..i know people dont want to inhale second hand smoke but truethfully where i live the air is polluted enough even if ya lived here for ur whole life u have a good chance of gettting a sickness in your lungs from it..i just wish people could find a happy medium and stick with it...there is only somuch smokers can take beforethey get mad lmao

OK,

People have known that smoking is bad for your health from the first time someone lit something up and took a puff! End. Of. Story. I can't believe we are paying into some kind of "fund" because someone decided to sue the big tobacco companies after his wife died of cancer. I wonder just how they proved it was the cigarettes that caused the cancer. There are many other reasons that cancer develops. Look at Andy Kaufman, he died of lung cancer and he never smoked a cigarette in his life. Personally I feel that they should have had to, at least, prove that it was the cigarettes. My understanding is that cigarettes only increase the risk of developing cancer, not CAUSE it.

Anywho. the government is just going to slowly legislate all of us out of that particular privilege some day. They have to. Don't you know it's their job to save us all from ourselves? Just like with seat belts. I see ads on tv all the time saying, "We are going to save lives." RIGHT!

yeah i know what ya mean where im living now they did a study and found out living here for most of your life with the polluted air will end up giving u some kind of sickness as well..and instead of trying to fix it they are to busy spending everyones money on anti smoking campaigns..if ya ask me they shoul duse the money more wisely and help solve some of the greater issues since there will always be someone smoking outside somewhere they will never be able to ban people from smoking..or they will find a way around it jsut like drugs and everything else