Tobacco x Mosquitos

From Globalink. org by Mr. James Repace
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For over a hundred years, tobacco products have been manufactured and marketed world-wide on an industrial scale, addicting billions of people, and killing and injuring hundreds of millions of these addicts and innocent by-standers. The multi-national tobacco companies have evolved into a rogue pharmaceutical industry that has engineered cigarettes to be ever more addictive, and has successfully corrupted governments world-wide to preserve itself. Although widespread knowledge about the harm that smoking can do has caused U.S. smoking prevalence to decline by about 50% since 1965, the absolute number of smokers in the U.S. declined by only 7% from a peak of 50.1 million in 1965 to 46.5 million in 2000, and the annual number of cigarettes sold declined by ~17.5%, which has been offset by price increases and lowered costs of production. I haven't seen any tobacco companies going out of business lately. If governments ever get as serious about tobacco as they are about malaria, they would wipe out this industry like they wipe out mosquitos. Since Philip Morris has endorsed the FDA legislation, this is an omen that FDA regulation, while achieving some cosmetic results, will prove to be a Pyrrhic victory for Public Health -- a lot of Strurm und Drang, signifying nothing. Jim Repace