Big Oil is PART of Big Cig Industry!
Watchdog | 21.11.2002 02:04
A few points/questions/etc. that may paint a different picture.
1) Since when are corporate-influenced, corporate-serving government officials our "Consumer Protection" champions? Few seem to suspect something wrong here. If they WERE consumer protectors, they failed miserably in keeping industrial toxins and carcinogens OUT of tobacco products.
2) According to U.S. patents (see Intellectual Property Network on line), cigarettes, in the U.S. at least, may be partly or entirely made of Fake Tobacco...concocted from all sorts of industrial waste cellulose....most of it chlorine-contaminated and therefore a source of dioxin in typical cigarette smoke. Even if tobacco is used, it is usually trash parts of the plant and is so processed and adulterated with untested, often known toxins and carcinogens, that it is absurd to call it...at this point..."tobacco". It's chlorine-contaminated, dioxin-delivering, possibly RADIOACTIVE (from uranium contaminated phosphate tobacco fertilizers), multi-ingredient, fire-starting (from added "burn accelerants") smoking products that we are talking about...NOT tobacco. Tobacco is just a natural plant...one that, incidentally, hasn't apparently been STUDIED for potential or determined harms. Yet, importantly, that's the alleged focus of attention.
See www.ktc.com/~bdrake for a great intro course, with lots of links, on what a typical cigarette is. It is NOT tobacco...by a long shot.
3) Re/ Advertising. It is important to note that NONE of the "concerned" attempts to ban cigarette advertising even MENTION fraud; fraud in deceiving consumers about the nature of the products...as if they are just tobacco. There are no moves by (corporate-funded) officials to demand that the non-tobacco elements be listed, and that warnings about them be made prominent. Of course, if there WERE warnings about dioxins, radiation, pesticide residues, addiction-enhancing additives, fire-starting chemicals, untested ingredients, etc. the government regulators who allowed them, and who accept funding from their manufacturers and insurers and investors, would be quite more than embarrassed. They may well be, and ought be, arrested. (No death penalty for them...that is inhumane as well.)
4) This "smoking" crusade is not about our health (people's health). It is about scapegoating an unpatented, unpatentable natural plant, and unwitting, unprotected and insufficiently-warned consumers, for some incredible crimes by those who adulterated typical (i.e., non natural) cigarettes with some of the world's worst industrial elements.....some even being Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) slated for a Global Ban, as per recent Stockholm treaty. What we are talking about here is Big Oil and Pharmaceuticals (tobacco pesticide makers), big timber (cig paper), chlorine (paper bleach, pesticides), Agricultural conglomerates (source of MANY untested cig additives), sugar (Marlboros have about 12.3% sugar according to Wall St. Journal), Pharmaceutical AGAIN (artifical sweeteners, other untested additives) and ALL of their insurers and invetors. Big Cig is evading HUGE and enormous penalties and profit loss by this exclusive, and medically/scientifically bogus focus on Tobacco. Ironic, eh? Those who push the "just quit smoking" etc crusades are SERVING the very industry they think they are fighting. That's the trouble with not having much truly PUBLIC broadcasting or other news. That's certainly the trouble with having gov't officials who also serve PRIVATE business interests.
It's not about "quitting smoking" (whatever "smoking" means scientifically or medically), it MUST be about making industry and gov't entities QUIT adding deadly substances, in secret, to consumer products...even ones some of us don't happen to like. It is hoped that people ALSO don't like corporate corruption of our governments, and mass homicide....and liability dodges that deprive victims world-wide of compensation. It's not only cigs that they regulate.
It is crucial to make the distinction between tobacco (the plant, even in pipes or cigs)...and the unprecedentedly- contaminated, processed, multi-ingredient typical cigarettes.
Such a cigarette is no more Tobacco than the morning newspaper is a Spruce Tree...although that paper may come from such a tree.
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PS: For just info about radiation in typical cigs, see...
www.webspawner.com/users/radioactivethreat/
We are talking about more victims than at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and etc combined. We are talking about Radiation Rods...not just "cigarettes". Certainly not "tobacco".
Watchdog