Big Tobacco Loses 11-Year Fight, Forced To Broadcast 'Dangers of Smoking' Ads

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deathmetal

Lifer
Jul 21, 2015
7,714
32
Smoking kills 1,200 people a day. The tobacco companies worked to make them as addictive as possible. There is no such thing as a safer cigarette. Ads with these statements hit the major television networks and newspapers this weekend, but they are not being placed by the American Cancer Society or other health groups. They're being placed by major tobacco companies, under the orders of the federal courts. "The ads will finally run after 11 years of appeals by the tobacco companies aimed at delaying and weakening them," the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, National African American Tobacco Prevention Network and the Tobacco-Free Kids Action Fund said in a joint statement.
"It's a pretty significant moment," the American Cancer Society's Cliff Douglas said. "This is the first time they have had to âfess up and tell the whole truth." The Justice Department started its racketeering lawsuit against the tobacco companies in 1999, seeking to force them to make up for decades of deception. Federal district judge Gladys Kessler ruled in 2006 that they'd have to pay for and place the ads, but the companies kept tying things up with appeals. "Employing the highest paid lawyers in America, the tobacco companies used every tool at their disposal to delay and complicate this litigation to avoid their day of reckoning," Douglas added.
The ads will inform Americans TV viewers that "More people die every year from smoking than from murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined," according to one of the ads." Besides $170 billion every year in medical costs -- plus another $156 billion in lost productivity -- roughly one in five deaths in America are smoking-related, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with cigarettes killing 480,000 Americans every year.
https://science.slashdot.org/story/17/11/26/2143200/big-tobacco-loses-11-year-fight-forced-to-broadcast-dangers-of-smoking-ads
Well, that's... something.
Am I the only one who is more afraid of car/truck exhaust, industrial pollution, and food additives than natural leaf smoke?

 

64alex

Part of the Furniture Now
May 10, 2016
566
339
[Am I the only one who is more afraid of car/truck exhaust, industrial pollution, and food additives than natural leaf smoke?]
No, we are at least two. It is true cigarette is a big problem but there are many other environmetal issues even more important. And while smoking is a personal choice, we cannot control the exhaust, pollution and food additives. So I suspect in order to avoid speaking about these other issues there is this crusade against smoking. Pipe smoking is just a casualty of the fight toward cigarettes.

 

stickframer

Part of the Furniture Now
Apr 11, 2015
875
8
Am I the only one who is more afraid of car/truck exhaust, industrial pollution, and food additives than natural leaf smoke?
No you aren't. I've been trying to make people more aware of those things, especially people who nag me for smoking a pipe. :lol:
And while smoking is a personal choice, we cannot control the exhaust, pollution and food additives.So I suspect in order to avoid speaking about these other issues there is this crusade against smoking. 
Good point. Food companies, as an example, are not in the business of providing healthy food, they are more in the business of providing a profit. So I suppose food additives, and the other things mentioned could be controlled, but that would take great will and come at a heavy cost economically, etc etc. Not gonna happen while there's so many great reality shows on television! So people rally against smoking as a way to feel better about other things.
It's frustrating to see the words 'smoking' and 'cigarettes' used interchangeably in the media.
All the more reason to lunt and smoke pipes in public as much as possible. :puffy:

 

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,602
14,666
Am I the only one who is more afraid of car/truck exhaust, industrial pollution, and food additives than natural leaf smoke?
I’m not concerned about those things because the Doctors don’t tell me to be concerned about those things. They only tell me to be concerned about tobacco use...any and all tobacco use. And they know best because they get all of the latest scientific information from the Pharmaceutical Industry.
Also, all forms of tobacco and tobacco use are equally bad because the Doctors and the Pharmaceutical Industry do not differentiate between them. And who am I to question the experts?
I only use tobacco because I am weak and selfish. But I’m hopeful that our great Pharma-Masters will soon have a vaccine or pill that will cure me of these things so I can live a normal happy life as they wish for me.

 
I think that the difference between tobacco smoke and car exhaust is that, car exhaust just kills you, tobacco smoke makes you sick and costs the insurance companies money. Dying a quick death is a positive for the insurance companies. It's not about how healthy we are, but how much money we cost them.

 

aldecaker

Lifer
Feb 13, 2015
4,407
42
I will not shed a tear for Big Tobacco, nor will I unduly scourge them for being about as honest as every other industry (VW emissions data, anyone?).
Count me among those who feel that various pollutants and food additives are more dangerous than tobacco smoke.
We can save medical insurance companies the hassle of paying for any sick person by KICKING THEM OUT OF THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, INTO THE GUTTER WHERE THEY BELONG. Then the poor dears wouldn't have to dip into their investment profits to pay claims.

 

snowyowl

Part of the Furniture Now
Oct 21, 2015
885
21
Aldecaker:

Count me among those who feel that various pollutants and food additives are more dangerous than tobacco smoke.
Sad logic. "Whataboutism" is the false-finger pointing over there: What about....
That has been illustrated, over and over again, to be a diversionary tactic to fool the foolish. I would reply in kind, by my caplock key is always disabled in my prefs file.
Recently: the Brits (about the Irish), Putin and Trump (about this and that).
For the chess players among us: Garry Kasparov said, "Moral relativism, 'whataboutism,' has always been a favorite weapon of illiberal regimes. For a US president to employ it against his own country is tragic."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

 

cigrmaster

Lifer
May 26, 2012
20,249
57,280
66
Sarasota Florida
How many more times do we need to have the government tell us tobacco is bad for us. Didn't they make the cigarette companies pay billions to the states to allegedly pay for increased health costs? Wasn't that money supposed to be put in a fund to actually pay for health costs from smoking but the states actually just put it in their general fund and did not spend the money like they were supposed to? I remember states came looking for even more money when they blew the money they were supposed to have saved.
"This is the first time they have had to âfess up and tell the whole truth."
Puuullleeeaaaassseeee, who on this planet doesn't know cigarettes are bad for you, who doesn't know there is no such thing as a healthy cigarette? What is going to happen is the tobacco companies will just raise their prices to cover their costs. The black market for cigarettes will continue to grow. I personally could care less about the cigarette companies but I do care if pipe tobacco mfgs get hurt by this somehow. I wonder how much money our government spent to get this ruling, how many millions did it take and how many kids could have been fed with the money they wasted? This country is so screwed up.

 
who on this planet doesn't know cigarettes are bad for you.

The problem is that for decades, they kept planting fake research, fake science, and kept at it, and kept at it, till there still is a faction of people who question whether there is any link between health issues and tobacco. Meanwhile they were working on making their product more and more addictive.

Then, they are responsible for every single word in the new FDA about pipes and tobacco.
Double screw them.

 

warren

Lifer
Sep 13, 2013
11,699
16,206
Foothills of the Chugach Range, AK
And, as we admonish "big tobacco" and "big insurance" we need to remember to thank them for being profitable and keeping our retirement plans solvent. Much as when we "knock" the foibles of the younger generation, we should to take the time to thank them for paying into Social Security. I got all my contributions back years ago. So, now I'm enjoying life on the backs of Mickey D's young employees, the great business sense of R. J. Reynolds, Arco and many other companies we love to castigate.
Life is complicated. We curse and debase certain companies even as we enjoy the fruits of their profitability.

 

papipeguy

Lifer
Jul 31, 2010
15,778
35
Bethlehem, Pa.
Statistics are as elastic as time. My Dad died at the age of 85. He gave up cigarettes at 55. when I looked at the COD on his death certificate is was listed as smoking related. I asked his doctor about it and he just shrugged and said, "Well he was a smoker." None of the chest xrays over the past 30 years indicated any issues with his lungs but he became a statistic the moment he died.

So, who are the winners here? Sounds like the networks who will bill the tobacco companies for airing the ads that no one will pay attention to.

BTW, I agree with Warren's take. My 401K became very sizable from companies many like to hate. There's politics and then there's business.

 

perdurabo

Lifer
Jun 3, 2015
3,305
1,575
Don't think I've ever seen car exhaust listed as Cause of Death, well, unless a hose was thrown throurgh the back window of a car.
I'm seeing nothing but smoke and mirrors.

 

aldecaker

Lifer
Feb 13, 2015
4,407
42
@Snowyowl:
Hmm. Interesting. Deathmetal first mentioned pollutants and food additives, 64alex, Stickframer, and Hawky454 all agreed with him before I did. And yet it is me who gets accused of "whataboutism". Perhaps you thought I would be more fun? Well, OK. Here we go.
Thank you for your concern, but my logic is not "sad". It is reasoned and as well-informed as I can make it. I was not connecting dots; you went ahead and did that for me. Nowhere did I state, nor do I think, that pollutants and food additives make smoking any healthier. I simply agreed that more widespread damage is caused by those two things than by smoking. While I appreciate your insults, I do not now, and never have, indulged in "whataboutism". Nor do I fly false flags or chase red herrings.
I don't know what it is you would "reply in kind" to, since I directed absolutely nothing in my post towards you, nor indeed to any snowy owls of any sort.
Any relativism was inferred by you, not implied by me, and as to your suggestion that I employ moral relativism, well, I resent it as the unfounded jibe that it is.
And Warren, I hear ya, and partially agree. But I can guarantee that the health insurance industry has cost me more, in inflated and rigged pricing schemes, than my 401k has profited from them.

 

perdurabo

Lifer
Jun 3, 2015
3,305
1,575
Aldecaker, that's great. Then you must agree with me that Insurance needs to be abandoned in everything but catastrophic coverage and Doctors and hospitals can finally compete like every other business does. Need I bring up the contract discounts that you enjoy because of The Health Insurance industry? Nah.

 

perdurabo

Lifer
Jun 3, 2015
3,305
1,575
I see Trump and Putin's name dropped. Guess this thread became instant Endangered Species.

 
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