Big Tobacco Makes Secret Plea To Avoid Payout

reply to post by sos37


How am I wrong about shutting down the companies? Did prohibiting alcohol work? Did making laws against porn work? How has outlawing prostitution worked out? The fact is that cigarettes exist, there is a demand, and a supply will follow. Show me one instance of prohibition working in the United States.

As I have said before cigarette companies pay in to the Medicare system in perpetuity. They use their corporate dollars to offset the cost of health care.

I am immoral? No I am a realist. I realize that by trying to eliminate the cigarette companies you will be doing more harm than good. How will creating a black market full of smugglers and illegal dealers help people? How will pulling tax money out of a failing economy help? How will taking money out of the Medicare system help? How will taking away money used to educate people about the dangers of smoking help?

Right now the number of smokers is dropping. The concensus seems to be that it has dropped 50% since the late 50's or early 60's. That is a slow but dramatic drop. The drop is due in large part to education and prohibitive taxation.

Now if we look at the effectiveness of prohibition we see another story. According to the National Office of Drug Control Policy the number of people reporting they have ever tried an illegal drug has increased 10% since 1979. Link

So it is immoral to want to educate people, avoid criminalizing people, make corporations pay for their part of healthcare, maintain necessary taxes, and allow informed adults to make their own choices. Yet it is moral to pull tax money out of the economy, turn innocent people in to criminals, not make corporations pay for the damge they cause, not educate people about the dangers, and tell others how to live.

Yeah I see your approach working so much better. It seems so much more humane. Especially since we have seen how well it worked with marijuana and other drugs. Let's ask the Mexican drug cartels for their opinion on prohibition. Lets ask Al Capone and Sam Giancana how prohibition worked out for them.

Tell me which is truly the better option.

The prohibition method that cost billions in tax payer dollars to fight criminal organizations, run courts, pay for medical care, and pay for education. Plus it does all of these things while creating an atmosphere where civil servants have a financial incentive to become corrupt.

The big tobacco method eliminates the need for increased prison space, eliminates the need for aditional cops, eliminates the need for more court personell, makes the manufacturer offset the cost of health care, makes the manufacturer educate the consumer, and actually adds taxes back in to economy. Plus it eliminates the financial incentive for corruption.

Oh, I am so evil. Please stop me before I make informed people take responsability for something. Stop me before I ask another corporation to pay for the external cost of their product.

[edit on 2-2-2010 by MikeNice81]

Not everyone who smokes gets lung cancer, emphecema etc just like not everyone who consumes junk food gets obese.
What's next?
Going after the billions of profits the fast food industry have made over the past few decades because their food has contributed to obesity in a percentage of the population who eat it?

People who smoke know the dangers and have for at least 15 years now.

If smoking is so deadly, those who began smoking pre-health warnings should be dead by now anyway.

reply to post by Flighty

If you had bothered to read the thread, instead of just posting a 'hit and run' after reading the OP... you may have made a contribution versus a repeat of what we have already covered.

Maybe their is a connection between those with ADD and the cheerleaders of this twisted enterprise?

reply to post by The Blind Eye

I'm back here responding to you. So if my intention was to "hit and run" as you put it, this thread wouldn't be bookmarked for me to find that you responded to my comment.
Now would it.

Four cigarette makers that control nearly 90 percent of U.S. retail cigarette sales have until Feb. 19 to persuade the government not to go to the Supreme Court and ask the justices to step into a landmark 10-year-old racketeering lawsuit

Most governments rackeetered through taxes on tobacco for decades from BOTH the tobacco companies AND the consumers. Wonder if they'll be returning any of the trillions in cash that they "profiteered" from to the consumer, who after all, are the ones who should see the money, not the governments who have already had their dip TWICE through tax.

The way the federal suit has played out contrasts sharply with state action against the tobacco industry.

The companies have agreed to pay $246 billion over 25 years to settle suits states brought to recover their costs of treating smoking-related illnesses in the Medicaid program, which serves the poor and disabled.

Gee. I thought the "high taxes" that governments collect on cigarettes is supposed to go towards the costs of smoking related illnesses?

Yeah sure, tobacco companies should come clean and pay up if what they were doing was illegal by hiding the effects of smoking.
But so should the GOVERNMENT.
Who, last time I looked, are still reaping in billions from tobacco tax even though they know the effects of smoking.
Pretty hypocritical don't you think?

As for the comments about ADD and cheerleaders.....I'd say don't accuse anyone of not reading the link unless you know for sure they haven't.

We're all entitled to say our piece in threads here so long as we don't offend anyone with name calling .
I did neither, you did.





[edit on 4-2-2010 by Flighty]

reply to post by Flighty

I stand corrected. As for name calling ADD and cheerleader are merely descriptors based on what you posted. If you want to take it personally that is your choice, but mind you i don't know adam about you... so that would be pretty silly now wouldn't it?

Now for business as usual; i think the assessment on what the tobacco industry cost the government and the american people is way below accurate. If the government wants to milk the opportunity for all it worth, i'm all for it. As others have astutely pointed out there are plenty of other industries that could be equally deemed 'criminal' in the way they conduct their business, and if we ever found an angle/way to go after them and do the same, again i'm all for it. As i said before our values/priorities collectively need to change... from profit before people to people before profits. Can anyone respond to this directly... instead of blurting out pro-capitalist crap?

Originally posted by The Blind Eye
reply to post by Flighty

 

I stand corrected. As for name calling ADD and cheerleader are merely descriptors based on what you posted. If you want to take it personally that is your choice, but mind you i don't know adam about you... so that would be pretty silly now wouldn't it?

the term ***hole is also a descriptor that you could have used. of course, one doesn't have to interpret that as an insult, right?

reply to post by Nathan_Orin

'***hole' is not specific/descriptive... neither is 'jerk' which holds the same exact meaning, so i think it's safe to say such words would be deemed 'name calling'. "ADD" and "Cheerleader" on the other hand are specific and descriptive... therefore are descriptors.

Now why with three pages worth of posts to respond to, you choose to respond to one that is off topic. Kinda passive-aggressive don't you think?... again this is a description based on your post, i'm not name calling. Maybe instead of derailing the thread you could address this...

As i said before our values/priorities collectively need to change... from profit before people to people before profits. Can anyone respond to this directly... instead of blurting out pro-capitalist crap?

...and now i have to add "accusations of name calling".

[edit on 4-2-2010 by The Blind Eye]

Originally posted by The Blind Eye
reply to post by Nathan_Orin

 

'***hole' is not specific/descriptive... neither is 'jerk' which holds the same exact meaning, so i think it's safe to say such words would be deemed 'name calling'. "ADD" and "Cheerleader" on the other hand are specific and descriptive... therefore are descriptors.

Now why with three pages worth of posts to respond to, you choose to respond to one that is off topic. Kinda passive-aggressive don't you think?... again this is a description based on your post, i'm not name calling. Maybe instead of derailing the thread you could address this...

[edit on 4-2-2010 by The Blind Eye]

heheh

i like those little twists of semantics. while i do believe that many people would disagree with you on the concept of vulgarities and insults not being specific and/or descriptive, it's much simpler to skip that argument and simply point out that any word holds absolutely no meaning except for the meaning that the readers and writers prescribe to them. therefore, i could call someone a "fairy," for example, and the term could be completely demeaning. however, who could deny that fairies are magical and wondrous creatures?
point being, when you used the terms 'ADD' and 'cheerleader' it came across as the equivalent of, "maybe if you'd focus and quit jumping up and down with your arms waving like that, you'd hear what i'm saying!"
(which kind of ties into that passive aggressiveness that you mentioned...)

As i said before our values/priorities collectively need to change... from profit before people to people before profits.

i completely agree.

however, i don't see how this

If the government wants to milk the opportunity for all it worth, i'm all for it.

really helps the problem.
i suppose that if you believe that our gov't is still for the people and by the people, then this ideology makes perfect sense. personally, i believe that pumping that money back into the gov't only perpetuates the 'profit before people' problem.

if our gov't were anything more than a corporation then...maybe it would work. but that's leading into topics altogether different from big tobacco. and i wouldn't want to derail the topic

Originally posted by Nathan_Orin

when you used the terms 'ADD' and 'cheerleader' it came across as the equivalent of, "maybe if you'd focus and quit jumping up and down with your arms waving like that, you'd hear what i'm saying!"
(which kind of ties into that passive aggressiveness that you mentioned...)

The descriptors don't require any interpretation or elaboration. Their meanings within themselves are sufficient, a dictionary would confirm this.

Now to make a single post, just to make a case out of it, that is a passive aggressive act. again a dictionary would also confirm this..

i suppose that if you believe that our gov't is still for the people and by the people, then this ideology makes perfect sense. personally, i believe that pumping that money back into the gov't only perpetuates the 'profit before people' problem.

Currently our government is for the corporations by the corporations, which means that the majority of the politicians represent the corporations' interests not the peoples'. When there is a case like this, the gov has no other choice but to turn their priorities around. True our gov or as you put it our 'corporation', is an unreliable money handler but it's all we have to work with. Never the less, i'd much rather see the money funneled towards a good cause, not a bad one. In this mammoth challenge to change our collective values/priorities around we have to start somewhere, and going after big tobacco is one step in the right direction.

I don't know exactly who you believe is posting "pro capitalist crap." I hardly see my posts as the rebirth of Friedman economics. To me it seems like everyone is being put on equal footing.

The consumer knows what he is buying. He is told what is in the product and the possible side effects. Then he makes a decision about the transaction. The corporation then has to help pay for the true cost of the product by putting money back in to the health care system and consumer education.

If you could be more specific I would be glad to further detail or defend anything I posted.

reply to post by The Blind Eye

: being, marked by, or displaying behavior characterized by the expression of negative feelings, resentment, and aggression in an unassertive passive way (as through procrastination and stubbornness)

(that's passive-aggressive)

see, i held no negative feelings, etc. in fact, i was pointing out something that i found funny. something that made me smile.
of course you could argue by saying that my words came across as passive-aggressive in your interpretation, but then we'd have to delve into that whole semantics concept again... (which, by the way, i would suggest you delve into anyway, so that you may understand the nature of my previous point, which already addresses the first paragraph of your latest reply).



on to the topic at hand:

Currently our government is for the corporations by the corporations, which means that the majority of the politicians represent the corporations' interests not the peoples'. When there is a case like this, the gov has no other choice but to turn their priorities around. True our gov or as you put it our 'corporation', is an unreliable money handler but it's all we have to work with.

agreed and agreed.

Never the less, i'd much rather see the money funneled towards a good cause, not a bad one. In this mammoth challenge to change our collective values/priorities around we have to start somewhere, and going after big tobacco is one step in the right direction.

debatable. however, supposing that you are completely correct, i would still be a bit confused as to how you see funneling money towards gov't (which, as you've said is 'for the corporations by the corporations,') helps anything when you've stated yourself that

our values/priorities collectively need to change... from profit before people to people before profits.

in other words, how is it helpful to take money from one corporate machine just to feed it into another? especially into one that has, arguably, caused much more death and dis-ease than big tobacco could ever even dream of?

Good find. S&F.

...Corporations have the rights of individual people, and the power of government - time for them to step up and be accountable. If for nothing else, then for the financial impacts of their actions.

Kind of a no-brainer, dontcha think?

I wonder if anywhere in that lawsuit it is mentioned of how tobacco plants have regular consumption of radioactive fertilizer's used frequently that cause more harm to the lungs due to metals left in the soil that ingest into the stems of plants and leaves and cause illnesses suchas Diabetes, cancer, alzeimer's disease and so on..

The big tobacco companies all use chemical phosphate fertilizer, which is high in radioactive metals, year after year on the same soil.

Here is the link below:

www.acsa2000.net...

This link below of Radioactive in connection of Phosphate Fertilizer's.
www.commondreams.org...

"Radium wastes from filtration systems at phosphate fertilizer facilities are among the most radioactive types of naturally occurring radioactive material wastes...Uranium and all of its decay-rate products are found in phosphate rock, fluorosilicic acid (fluoride) and phosphate fertilizer."

I just thought does that also include fluriode put in our tooth paste to be of radioactive substance? :/

"Removal of uranium as a product is no longer profitable and all of the extraction facilities have been dismantled. The uranium that remains in the phosphoric acid and fertilizer products is at a low enough level that it is safe for use." That's not reassuring. Chronic exposure to low levels of contamination can be as dangerous, or more so, than chronic high levels of exposure or acute occurrences.

[edit on 7-2-2010 by DClairvoyant]

Originally posted by soficrow

...Corporations have the rights of individual people...

...and yet have 'limited liability', so they can get away with a whole lot more:



[edit on 7-2-2010 by The Blind Eye]

Latest article update (March 7):

U.S. Supreme Court: U.S. To Big Tobacco -- Fork Over That $280B

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler didn't mince words in her ruling: "(T)he evidentiary picture must be viewed in its totality ... to fully appreciate how massive the case is against (the companies), how irresponsible their actions have been and how heedless they have been of the public welfare and the suffering caused by the cigarettes they sell."

She added the companies' business "survives, and profits, from selling a highly addictive product which causes diseases that lead to a staggering number of deaths per year, an immeasurable amount of human suffering and economic loss, and a profound burden on our national health care system."

She put the death toll from tobacco at 400,000 a year.
Kessler agreed to consider whether the companies should "disgorge" past profits earned from the racketeering behavior.

source: www.officialwire.com...

[edit on 9-3-2010 by The Blind Eye]