US to Use Graphic Images of Death and Disease on Cigarette Packs
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: A dead man in a coffin, a crying baby, a bald cancer patient and a close-up of a mouth with dirty teeth and a malignant lip lesion are among new graphic warnings the United States is proposing for cigarette packs.

The changes are part of a 2009 law that requires new and larger labels on cigarettes to depict the negative health consequences of smoking.

The warnings will take up about half the space on the front of each cigarette pack, located on the upper portion so they are visible in most store displays.

A series of 36 graphics are available on the Food and Drug Administration's website. After public consultation the government will choose nine images to place on cigarette packs. Read on and comment >>> | Thursday, November 11, 2010

Isn't it time they left smokers alone? Don't the authorities think that people know the risks of smoking tobacco? This relentless war on smokers is becoming very tiresome and it is certainly very unfair, especially when many people get up to far worse than enjoy a few puffs on a cigarette.

I write not as a smoker but as an ex-smoker. But I like to think that I live by the maxim, 'live and let live'.

It is very strange that at the very time that the US is clamping down so hard on smokers, the authorities are legalising the use of marijuana. Take California as a case in point: Schwarzenegger has just relaxed the law there to make smoking this drug much easier.

I have been in America as a smoker many times, before I gave up. I have also been in California. Trying to find somewhere to light up is a challenge indeed! But yet they can come to the conclusion that they can ease up on the drug laws. Go figure!

No sane person would advocate smoking cigarettes. Encouraging people to quit is a good thing. But that needs to be gotten into perspective. The smoking habit is indubitably unhealthy; but there are far worse things than smoking and nobody does anything about them. Smoking has become the bête noire of the day. Unfortunately to the exclusion of all other evils.

If I had children, which I don't, if the worst thing they got up to was smoking a cigarette, I'd count myself very lucky indeed. This world is full of far greater evils.

Since the decline of the importance of religion in our daily lives, people seem to have become obsessed with trying to prolong their lives. They think they can find the secret to eternal life. Years ago, people relied on the idea of the afterlife for that. Now people have become health freaks instead. Strange that! Fact is, though, as an American friend of mine always says: We can't get out of this life alive! – © Mark

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American Health Nazis Move Closer to Home
Photo courtesy of Google Images
TOWNHALL.COM: During Prohibition, making and selling liquor was illegal, but drinking it was not. With tobacco, we are moving toward the opposite situation, where it will be legal to make and sell cigarettes but not to smoke them.

A smoking ban recently approved by the city council of Belmont, Calif., a town halfway between San Jose and San Francisco, is so sweeping that saying where it does not apply is easier than saying where it does. Smoking will still be allowed in tobacco shops, in automobiles, in some hotel rooms, in private residences that do not share a floor or ceiling with other private residences, and on streets and sidewalks, assuming you can find a spot that is not within 20 feet of a smoke-free location.

That may be hard, since Belmont's smoke-free areas include not only buildings open to the public but outdoor locations where people wait, such as ATM lines and bus stops, or work, such as construction sites and restaurant patios. But a smoker who despairs of finding an outdoor area where smoking is allowed can still light up even if he does not own a car and is unlucky enough to live in an apartment or condominium. He just has to land a role in a theatrical production "where smoking is an integral part of the story." Anti-Tobacco Crusaders Boldly Go into Smokers' Homes (more) By Jacob Sullum

Mark Alexander