To the Editor:
I’m stunned whenever I see a young person smoking, and I see that more and more. Don’t they know that cigarettes kill and, at 40 or 45 cents apiece here, burn up pocket change fast?
So I don’t quite get Congress’s feckless proposal to fob more tobacco regulation onto the Food and Drug Administration, which arguably cannot handle what it already has to do. If anyone understands tobacco addiction, it is the First Smoker, President Obama, who famously sneaks cigarettes whenever he can. How can he endorse such half-hearted action?
What is instead called for is a Prohibition-style tobacco ban, not a little Congressional tinkering. Of course, state and local governments relish their $20 billion yearly tax windfall from tobacco, and the federal government its $7 billion bonanza, a figure tallied before the recent 61-cent-a-pack federal tax increase. Politicians also enjoy the campaign contributions that waft their way from Big Tobacco. Indeed, even Mr. Obama took $41,000 for his campaign.
Government and politicians—and smokers—should just go cold turkey on tobacco and tobacco money, for the sake of the country’s well-being. Anything less is two-faced and toothless.
Bill Apple
New York, June 12, 2009
To the Editor:
I think that regulation of tobacco by the Food and Drug Administration is a bad idea. The F.D.A. already has too much on its plate concerning the regulation of food products and medicines.
As the article mentioned, only one in five Americans still smoke. Obviously, the antismoking information campaign of the last many years is having a beneficial effect. Those who choose to smoke should be left alone to do so just as those who choose to overeat, become obese and develop diseases like diabetes are allowed to do so.
I haven’t heard anything about the F.D.A.’s trying to make greasy burgers and fries taste so bad that people won’t buy them.
When it comes to what Americans ingest into their bodies, our nation has become obsessed with nanny-state regulation. Enough already! It’s too bad that we aren’t half as concerned about the garbage Americans put into their minds on a daily basis.
Louis Candell
Williamsburg, Va., June 12, 2009
