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Tobacco Bill

Will the Tobacco bill hurt farmers?

  • YES

    Votes: 7 46.7%
  • NO

    Votes: 4 26.7%
  • MAYBE

    Votes: 2 13.3%
  • DON'T KNOW

    Votes: 2 13.3%

  • Total voters
    15

James Wright

Commodore
Commodore
Will the tobacco bill signed by the President hurt the tobacco farmers of the United States?
i myself say YES!
 
The tobacco farmer will eventually become extinct as the tobacco companies switch to other non tobacco products.

James
 
Um thats a good thing. Tobacco is a bad thing, I don't feel sorry for people who produce it.
 
Um thats a good thing. Tobacco is a bad thing, I don't feel sorry for people who produce it.
To use tobacco is a choice, not something forced on people. Why make it harder for those who want to smoke to do so? Aren't we supposed to have freedom of choice in a free country?
 
Personally I'd much rather they just outright moved towards banning the product entirely than these bullshit moves that don't actually hurt the biggest producers of cigarettes.

This bill was specifically written to do the least amount of damage to 'big tobacco', including allowing them to continue using menthol as a flavoring(a quarter of all cigarette sales) while banning all others including clove which is one of the biggest exports of Indonesia and we one of their largest markets. (Im biased here 'cause I only smoke Cloves/Kreteks)

Kids were smoking long before they made Strawberry-Vanilla-Creme-Delite Camels or whatever it is they think they're taking off the market here. Flavored cigarettes still generally taste pretty terrible and still induce coughing fits for people trying them for the first time.

Harsher penalties for selling to minors, minor possession, bigger warning labels and limits on advertising make sense. . . but the flavor ban doesn't. I'm an adult, and I'm allowed to smoke a potentially deadly substance UNLESS IT TASTES GOOD. I smoke so little and have never gotten addicted, so I have no reason to keep smoking once kreteks go off the market. Yeah, that is a good thing on the whole and I'll be healtheir for it, but I've had the freedom of choice taken away and there will still be 20% of the population out there smoking Marlboros and Camels to their hearts content while I grumble and humbug without my Djarums. I'll just have to import a carton or two to last me through the winter.

So yeah, bullshit.
 
Boo hoo, maybe I'll give half a shit about smokers' rights when the nasty bitch who lives in the apartment below me doesn't randomly stink up my dwelling with her filthy suicidal habit.
 
She'll probably still be allowed to keep smoking, it is just the good smelling ones they're banning. ;)
 
We already have relatively draconian smoking laws here in Canada, with regard to the use and also marketing of the product.

As a smoker it doesn't really affect me. And although I don't really want to quit, I realize how detrimental it can be to public health so I'm not all for not promoting it to prospective users.
 
Um thats a good thing. Tobacco is a bad thing, I don't feel sorry for people who produce it.
To use tobacco is a choice, not something forced on people. Why make it harder for those who want to smoke to do so? Aren't we supposed to have freedom of choice in a free country?
I see it more as a public health measure than some sort of libertarian apocalypse.
 
She'll probably still be allowed to keep smoking, it is just the good smelling ones they're banning. ;)
Well, I'm going to argue that none of them smell good, but yeah, I know she'll get to keep smoking her nasty shit. Funny how her rights don't end somewhere short of polluting my lungs with garbage though.
 
Now the flavored cigarette bootleggers will get rich while they shoot up the neighborhoods (with their 9mm pistols), the same way the marijuana, coke and meth dealers do already!

Why was nothing learned from the utter failure of the twentieth century's attempt at alcohol prohibition? When was the last time you heard of a beer wholesaler shooting a convenience store operator over an overdue bill? Seen any reports of competing distillers having a gun battle lately? The main accomplishments of this "War on Drugs" has been turning our cities into war zones, while people still die from overdoses and the mid level distributors and smugglers still get rich (ohh yea- a few go to prison).

The prison guards can search inmates and visitors any time they want, and still can't eliminate drug trade and use in the prisons. It's insane to think it's feasible in a society where people have the justified constitutional rights to privacy and security in their persons and papers.

Note that high tax rates will have similar effects as outright prohibition. For decades marijuana wasn't so much illegal on a federal level, but there were strict penalties for possessing it without having unobtainable federal tax stamps.
 
To use tobacco is a choice, not something forced on people.

Secondhand smoke is not a choice. It *is* forced on people - people who did not choose to smoke.
So is breathing in wood smoke when I pass someone's yard who's burning, or car exhaust when I'm walking down a busy street. People do not have the right to be shielded from all possible harm or discomfort at the expense of the rights of others. We already have laws banning smoking in public buildings, separate smoking sections in restaurants (in the few places its still legal to smoke in them). How much further do you want to take it? You chances of being harmed by occasionally having to walk through a cloud of smoke are slim to nil. There are a thousand other things you're exposed to on a daily basis that are far more likely to cause you cancer or kill you outright. Where's the outrage there? If you don't want to be around someone who's smoking a cigarette, go stand somewhere else. Odds are that person has already been forced outside or into an isolated room or out-of-the-way corner to begin with.

All prohibition and harsh regulation do, when applied to vices people enjoy, is frustrate and create black markets.

As for flavored cigarettes enticing minors - are they completely out of touch? When I was going through middle school and high school, it wasn't "cool" to smoke a bananna-flavored cig. Being seen doing so would get you labeled a pansy quicker than you could flick your bic. :rolleyes:
 
Juan while I understand your argument, may I ask if you know anything remotely about asthma? Wood smoke, for reasons unexplained to me isn't as painful on my lung as cigarette smoke is. In fact, if I am exposed to a small amount of cigarette smoke (and believe me I am, both at the place I work and a place I visit my friends), and given the conditions outside, I can be in pain for more than a week. And I'm not talking about ouch, it hurts. I'm talking, I'm having deep REM sleep and then I get this sharp stabbing pain in the right side of my chest, that I can't breath for a couple minutes, waking up type of pain.

I also can lose my voice due to my lung not inflating enough. Cutting down even a small amount of cigarette smoke is very good for my health. I rather not be couped up inside a house.
 
Juan while I understand your argument, may I ask if you know anything remotely about asthma? Wood smoke, for reasons unexplained to me isn't as painful on my lung as cigarette smoke is. In fact, if I am exposed to a small amount of cigarette smoke (and believe me I am, both at the place I work and a place I visit my friends), and given the conditions outside, I can be in pain for more than a week. And I'm not talking about ouch, it hurts. I'm talking, I'm having deep REM sleep and then I get this sharp stabbing pain in the right side of my chest, that I can't breath for a couple minutes, waking up type of pain.

I also can lose my voice due to my lung not inflating enough. Cutting down even a small amount of cigarette smoke is very good for my health. I rather not be couped up inside a house.
I AM sorry to hear about your health problems, but I think that you are very much in the minority here, and a certain amount of responsibility must fall on those who wish to avoid cigarette smoke to... you know... AVOID it. And I'd also bet that smoking isn't the only thing that can trigger an episode - if that's not true of you, than it probably is in others with similar conditions. We can't be held responsible for you being sick to begin with.

Look, most smokers are not evil-minded people. We're not out to cause discomfort, pain, or disgust in others. If you let it be known you have a problem with it, most of us will probably take it elsewhere, or even wait awhile. We already have TONS of restrictions placed on us and are taxed half to death every time we want to buy a pack. How much more difficult do you want to make our lives to make yours a little bit easier?
 
Look, most smokers are not evil-minded people. We're not out to cause discomfort, pain, or disgust in others. If you let it be known you have a problem with it, most of us will probably take it elsewhere, or even wait awhile. We already have TONS of restrictions placed on us and are taxed half to death every time we want to buy a pack. How much more difficult do you want to make our lives to make yours a little bit easier?
Your rights are great and all, but it does me no good with the stinky bitch that moved into the apartment below me. It's more than a 'minor inconvenience', with really no legal recourse.

I can live with holding my breath while walking by stink artists on the sidewalk or whatever. I also appreciate smokers who have basic consideration for other people, but frankly there are too many that don't.

I feel pretty justified in my disdain of smokers. I mean, I look down on people who don't bathe regularly and stink up the joint, and frankly smokers stink is worse, and has much farther reach.
 
Look, most smokers are not evil-minded people. We're not out to cause discomfort, pain, or disgust in others. If you let it be known you have a problem with it, most of us will probably take it elsewhere, or even wait awhile. We already have TONS of restrictions placed on us and are taxed half to death every time we want to buy a pack. How much more difficult do you want to make our lives to make yours a little bit easier?
Your rights are great and all, but it does me no good with the stinky bitch that moved into the apartment below me. It's more than a 'minor inconvenience', with really no legal recourse.

I can live with holding my breath while walking by stink artists on the sidewalk or whatever. I also appreciate smokers who have basic consideration for other people, but frankly there are too many that don't.

I feel pretty justified in my disdain of smokers. I mean, I look down on people who don't bathe regularly and stink up the joint, and frankly smokers stink is worse, and has much farther reach.
Well, sorry to say, friend, but that's the kind of thing that happens when you live in an apartment. A lot of times smells and even sounds won't go through from floor to floor, but in some you can smell offensive odors, hear offensive sounds, even see offensive things. Its life. People bother each other. You may be bothering someone else and not even know it.
 
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