Senate Passes Pathetic Tobacco Control Bill

There's no other word to describe it: The U.S. Senate's tobacco control bill is pathetic. It bans candy cigarettes and fruit-flavored cigarettes, but doesn't even require cigarette companies to disclose the cigarette ingredients they use until nearly a year-and-a-half later. The bill bans the use of the word "light" from cigarette packages, but even the tobacco companies admit this will make virtually no difference, as smokers have grown accustomed to buying cigarettes labeled with color codes that indicate a "light" designation.

And perhaps most importantly, this bill now puts the FDA in the position of approving the marketing and consumption of a product that directly promotes heart disease, strokes and cancer. The FDA, in other words, will now lend its stamp of approval to a product that openly kills people.

Tobacco as an FDA-approved drug?
If the FDA has any ethics whatsoever, it must ban tobacco products outright. For how can theFood and Drug Administration approve the marketing and selling of a deadly carcinogenic product when, at the same time, it bans cherry growers from describing the everyday health benefits of cherries?

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is responsible for approving the marketing and distribution of both foods and drugs. Cigarettes are obviously not foods or dietary supplements, and since tobacco is inhaled for its pharmacological effects, that clearly putscigarettes in the drugs category. So if this bill becomes law, it will force the FDA to declare tobacco to be a drug.

So if tobacco is a drug, then where are the safety tests required for drug approval? The FDA assaults fruit and herb companies on a daily basis, threatening them with being shut down for selling "unapproved drugs," and yet now the FDA is about to be put in the position of approving an admittedly deadly product that has no health benefits whatsoever while contributing to serious degenerative disease!

Interestingly, this position is not at all unusual for the FDA. The agency has already granted approval to thousands of toxic chemicals that openly harm human health -- pharmaceuticals. FDA-approved drugs, after all, kill over 100,000 Americans each year. If the FDA's portfolio of drugs includes tobacco, that number will rise to well over half a million Americans killed each year by FDA-approved drugs!

Furthermore, it would make laughable any claim by the FDA that it is working to "protect the public." As the agency approving the marketing, sale and consumption of a product that inarguably kills over 400,000 people a year, the FDA would cement its position as a peddler of poison.