COMMENTARY | Have you ever been driving down the road when you
saw a mother driving, smoking with all windows closed and a toddler in
the backseat? It infuriates me. I must say it is the only thing that
makes me understand how someone could have road rage. As someone whose
father and mother smoked, long car trips were fraught with the dangers
of that infernal smoke. Trapped with impending doom, watching the looks
of pure joy on one or another of my parents' faces was a most horrifying
experience. I knew my parents were killing themselves and me right
along with them. I think knowing that my father was this renowned
biochemist who was once a cancer researcher at Dana- Farber Cancer Institute,
my father saw firsthand what smoking did to a baby in the womb, a child
trapped in a home with smoke, or an adult whose lungs are so filled
with T cells from smoking, that he has no normal cells to breathe with.
The Obama Administration filing the FDA appeal was the best news I have heard in a long time. You see, tobacco and I go back to my childhood when I was a young boy on a North Carolina farm that grew tobacco. My family grew up with its additive smell and touch. Ninety percent of my family went on to smoke. I am just one of the few who escaped its grip, not to say it did not almost get me too. In the Army during the 1980s, boredom and John Wayne movies recruited many new smokers in the military. "Smoke em if ya got em": How many times on 20-mile road marches and after mess hall did I hear those words? The images that the FDA is requiring are some of the best I have ever seen.
Why a corporation should be considered a "person"? Why should a corporation be able to pollute the human gene pool and the environment at the same time for mere profit? Stopping smoking is the most preventable cause of death in America. If you took all the guns off the streets and all the cars off the roads; you still would not equal the amount of deaths caused from smoking when 21 percent of Americans smoke. Imagine one quarter of your population raising the cost of healthcare so much that you and I cannot afford health insurance. Smoking is a national security problem when we cannot find enough recruits to the military who do not smoke. Thank you, President Obama. I am behind you and the FDA 100 percent.
The Obama Administration filing the FDA appeal was the best news I have heard in a long time. You see, tobacco and I go back to my childhood when I was a young boy on a North Carolina farm that grew tobacco. My family grew up with its additive smell and touch. Ninety percent of my family went on to smoke. I am just one of the few who escaped its grip, not to say it did not almost get me too. In the Army during the 1980s, boredom and John Wayne movies recruited many new smokers in the military. "Smoke em if ya got em": How many times on 20-mile road marches and after mess hall did I hear those words? The images that the FDA is requiring are some of the best I have ever seen.
Why a corporation should be considered a "person"? Why should a corporation be able to pollute the human gene pool and the environment at the same time for mere profit? Stopping smoking is the most preventable cause of death in America. If you took all the guns off the streets and all the cars off the roads; you still would not equal the amount of deaths caused from smoking when 21 percent of Americans smoke. Imagine one quarter of your population raising the cost of healthcare so much that you and I cannot afford health insurance. Smoking is a national security problem when we cannot find enough recruits to the military who do not smoke. Thank you, President Obama. I am behind you and the FDA 100 percent.
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