Let’s assume that Congress throws out all legislation concerning the regulation of the tobacco industry. What’s the worst-case scenario? What’s the worst that could happen if we let Big Tobacco walk all over us? Inversely, what’s the best-case scenario? I put this in the pit because I didn’t want the snooty GD Mods getting mad and calling me a troll.
Douche.
All legislation?
Well, that means removing age limits, removing all FDA regulation, removing all taxation, removing smoking bans, and removing all education efforts. That’s just for starts.
Worst case? Hmmm. Tobacco companies start handing out free samples of cadmium and pesticide laced cigarettes in SpongeBob Squarepants boxes with diagrams about how smoking makes you smarter, healthier, and better smelling to preschoolers. So they can get a lock on new markets, you know. Cigarette advertising everywhere with laughably false statements. Cigarettes for sale anywhere and everywhere, and the entire world awash with cigarette butts.
Within a couple of years, an enormous spike in the number of smokers. Within ten years, a proportionately large spike of lung cancer, mouth cancer, throat cancer, asthma, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, heart attack, other forms of cancer, ear infections in children, emphysema, and COPD. A staggering increase in preventable deaths - not just for smokers but for those exposed to secondhand smoke. A jump in the number of deaths caused by fires started by lit cigarettes. Also, probably some more environmental fires from people tossing butts or improperly extinguished cigarettes.
Best case scenario? Society stops hating the fat people quite so much because the smokers are a bigger target.
You cannot begin to fathom the size of the fuck I do not give.
As I…walk through this world
Nothin’ can stop
The Douche of Earl…
You’re not going to get a rise out of me. I am in control, here, elucidator. Besides, I cannot rightly be called a douche, since I equate being a douche with trying to dress and act like the people on Jersey Shore, or being white and “gangsta” I live in Ohio, and where I’m from, redneck wiggers are common here.
Fail.
Look, I stopped giving a fuck what people said or thought about me when I turned 16. So basically [Matrix] I give you the finger, and you give me my fucking phone call. [/Matrix]
Well, it’s still small enough to allow you to write this.
Well, I guess that depends on whether we’re just removing the special treatment (by which I mean the legislation that singles out the tobacco industry) or actively writing in exceptions to other laws for tobacco companies. For instance, truth in advertising laws would presumably still apply, tossing a butt on the ground is still littering, and other broad laws that encompass much more than the tobacco industry. And frankly, I don’t think that the government’s education programs have had that much to do with the trend toward non-smoking, so I doubt if there would be a serious trend backward to a predominantly smoking society. It’s something that a majority of society recognizes as a vice.
That said, I think that you’re right that the resumption of smoking indoors would be the most visible and immediate response. While most smokers are conscious of the risks to others when they smoke indoors, some jerks are not.
It’s quite large, actually, but you can’t have it. It’s my fuck, and I’m not giving it.
I mean, if all laws that govern what we can and can’t do with tobacco were to be removed, that would mean that tobacco companies could go out and put up ads with faked science that says smoking adds elebenty-billion years to your life, and that you can see the narwhal bacon at midnight, and junk like that.
Well, at one point the tobacco companies were breeding plants and treating their products to increase the nicotine content in order to make it more addictive. Presumably without regulation they’d continue down that path, and we’d have cigarettes that are even more addictive then is currently the case.
They would probably also have some kind of cyborg army.
Let me help you out here, slick. You got some minor potential, maybe you can be saved from the Outer Darkness…
You go round calling attention to your fantasy that you are being persecuted by the Luminous Ones, you pretty much stake out a section of Douchebag Estates. Its a dead give-away, the deluded one almost always is convinced beyond all reason that they are being persecuted because thier brilliant insights and cogent observations are a threat to the status quo. Ain’t so. Our mods are too lazy for shit like that.
I hasten to point out that douchebags have been reformed and redeemed herein. Not as often as we’d like, true, but its happened. And as soon as they stop following the Way of the Douche, its like they never were, poof! gone. And they find themselves in the happy situation of convivial company and boon, if somewhat sarcastic, companionship.
Of course, this is largely because most of this crowd has the short term memory of broccoli, but there’s an upside to that, too.
No, we…! … doesn’t…
Hm, does addiction work that way? Is the addiction quality [?] of nicotine based on its strength, or is it about the same no matter the concentration [at least as long as the concentration isn’t toxic of course ]
I would consider the renewed tobacco presence would probably be …
renewed advertising on tv, in magazines and on the radio
renewed prizes/merchandising gimmics - trading cards, ‘green stamps’, actually packs of cigs as giveaways at stores and public functions
cigarette machines being placed in bars, restaurants, street corners
smoking in public places again
renewal of the flavored cigs that were supposedly highly attractive to kids
Would that include dropping the extra taxes on them?
NM
“Can I shoot something by you guys?”
–Timid Circle-jerk Newbie
Is it your grandma?