Tobacco regulation back on Congress' front burner

WASHINGTON, Sept 29 (Reuters) - The long push to grant federal health authorities power to regulate tobacco re-emerged on Wednesday as a top issue in Congress as lawmakers pushed to include it in a massive corporate tax bill they hope to wrap up within the next week.

Anti-tobacco lawmakers want to grant the Food and Drug Administration power to regulate tobacco, including adding bolder health warnings on cigarette packs, regulating advertising, more aggressively combating underage sales and regulating ingredients to make cigarettes less harmful. It could not ban cigarettes or completely eliminate nicotine.

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This is the part that I dont like ,to make the proposal more passable they the are bribbing a $12 billion industry-financed buyout to U.S. tobacco farmers struggling with an antiquated price support system. The are also sticking at the end of another bill in hopes that it gets less notice.One more step in the process of trying to ban smoking completely.

Originally posted by jeeze louise

This is the part that I dont like ,to make the proposal more passable they the are bribbing a $12 billion industry-financed buyout to U.S. tobacco farmers struggling with an antiquated price support system.

I Don't like this part either. When this all started, we were told that we should have at least $69 billion for the buyout. I think the true cost should be even higher because we have a lot of money tied up in equipment that can't be used for anything but tobacco production.

The price that we are paid for our tobacco has gotten to the point that it just does pay the expenses. We are paid less now than we were over 20 years ago and our expenses are about 5 times what they were then.

I grow tobacco but I don't smoke and have no problem with anybody that does smoke.