In Defense Of Tobacco

So the Senate has passed a bill to allow the FDA to regulate tobacco; the House passed one a few months ago.  If you’d like, you can read the New York Times’s self-righteous editorial on the subject.  I’m a former smoker, and while I’m not in love with the tobacco industry, I think they get a lot of shit that they don’t deserve.

I mean, the Times says, “…clearly the regulators will still need help from strong anti-smoking campaigns.”  Really?

I am twenty-three years old, which means that I have seen thousands of anti-smoking television commercials, and precisely zero commercials for cigarettes.  I still smoked for five years.

In defense of tobacco companies, I would say that there are a whole lot of companies that sell products that could kill people.  And I don’t mean like alcohol companies and gun makers, but like, the folks who make Hot Pockets.  Tobacco companies are the only ones who put labels on their products that say, for all intents and purposes, that they will kill you.

Tobacco is like any other drug on the face of the earth – it’s like caffeine, alcohol, marijuana, aspirin, whatever.  There are good things about it, there are bad things about it.  I mean, if we want to get economic about it, whouldn’t stifling tobacco companies put some farmers out of business?

The Times talks about kids, and of course I don’t want tobacco companies to market toward kids, but they don’t. The only places I’ve seen tobacco ads lately are in Rolling Stone and Fast Company (American Spirit has advertised there, if memory serves).  Kids don’t read those magazines, because, well, kids don’t read.

I am not pro-tobacco company; I just think the industry is an easy target that allows people to avoid thinking about a lot of the other garbage – pharmaceutical, dietary – that we put into our bodies on a regular basis.