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  • Welcome to the new site. Here's a thread about the update where you can post your feedback, ask questions or spot those nasty bugs!

Let's not talk about lenses...

fahim mohammed

Well-known member
I agree with Tom's analysis in the post above.

The question I asked previously somehow got lost in translation.

Let me pose it again...

Narcotics are controlled drugs. Narcotics kill. Trade in narcotics, strictly controlled. The severest penalties imposed for trafficking in such products. Huge sums of money to be made in its trade.

Cigarettes are available for purchase easily ( relatively speaking ). Cigarette smoking kills. The effects of cigarette smoking on the unborn fetus is well documented. The financial effects of providing medical care to complications directly related to cigarette smoking rise exponentially with the age, number of years one has been smoking and of course on one's own insurer.

Cigarettes are big business. Huge monies in the trade.

Question...why are cigarettes allowed to be exported freely? And not controlled.
Which countries export the largest number of cigarettes?
Why is there no International action against countries that trade openly and export death in the form of cigarettes?

Morphine has some medical uses. Cigarettes have none.
If opium fields in Afghanistan and other narcotic fields in South America can be burnt; why not the tobacco plantations...you know where.

Objections were made in a previous post of mine when I used the term ' race '. Let me resurrect it again. Has ' race ' got something to do with the free pass tobacco growers get in certain unnamed countries. Or is all of this an international conspiracy to keep the poorest of countries in a perpetual state of health underdevelopment. Slaves to a habit, where the supplier operates through the biggest financial markets of the world. I find it strange that the biggest cigarette exporter and producer also is one of the world's largest food product companies. Feed their hunger, suck their lungs!!
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
I'm not a conspiracy theorist, Fahim, but it does make me wonder as well. At the end of the day I know you're a smart bloke and will make suitable choices based on fact. But what of those who don't know the facts? They seem a bit more vulnerable to the ways of the corporate giants. Those people may also be more vulnerable to propaganda and misleading information. Whether that is race related, I don't know. I know in Australia the highest usagle of legal drugs (tobacco and alcohol) is among the indigenous population. They also have the shortest life expectancy and the highest rate of lung cancer, alcoholism and a few other deadlies. They are also among our most uneducated and unemployed.
Im not suggesting anyone is conspiring to keep them there but while they are there the choices are limited by availability and education. And this is a huge burden on the communities, individuals and governments.
Go figure!
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
I agree with Tom's analysis in the post above.

The question I asked previously somehow got lost in translation.

Let me pose it again...

Narcotics are controlled drugs. Narcotics kill. Trade in narcotics, strictly controlled. The severest penalties imposed for trafficking in such products. Huge sums of money to be made in its trade.

Cigarettes are available for purchase easily ( relatively speaking ). Cigarette smoking kills. The effects of cigarette smoking on the unborn fetus is well documented. The financial effects of providing medical care to complications directly related to cigarette smoking rise exponentially with the age, number of years one has been smoking and of course on one's own insurer.

Cigarettes are big business. Huge monies in the trade.

Question...why are cigarettes allowed to be exported freely? And not controlled.
Which countries export the largest number of cigarettes?
Why is there no International action against countries that trade openly and export death in the form of cigarettes?

Morphine has some medical uses. Cigarettes have none.
If opium fields in Afghanistan and other narcotic fields in South America can be burnt; why not the tobacco plantations...you know where.

Objections were made in a previous post of mine when I used the term ' race '. Let me resurrect it again. Has ' race ' got something to do with the free pass tobacco growers get in certain unnamed countries. Or is all of this an international conspiracy to keep the poorest of countries in a perpetual state of health underdevelopment. Slaves to a habit, where the supplier operates through the biggest financial markets of the world. I find it strange that the biggest cigarette exporter and producer also is one of the world's largest food product companies. Feed their hunger, suck their lungs!!

Yes, Fahim, it's inconsistent that cigarettes are traded freely and not outlawed. The argument might be that smokers of cigarettes aren't as likely to crash cars while driving under the influence and similar arguments about only harming oneself and not others. Still, the public health and human cost is enormous.

This is a matter of capitalistic and commercial exploitation of the willing and vulnerable. In decades past, it was the entire Western populations. As the educated folk have gotten and believed the message, smoking has declined in the USA, Canada, The U.K., Australia, New Zealand and likely many other countries with anti-smoking awareness, campaigns and laws.

Still, confounding that, at least in the USA, is the anti-science attitude of many, relating scare-talk of bad-health effects of cigarette smoke to the same garbage pile they put in global warming concerns, need to teach children protection against HIV AIDS and HPV viruses and the like, as if these are all affronts to good red-bloodded family values and rugged independent manhood and decision making without government interference. I can well imagine that telling a chain-smoking Frenchman, Israeli or Pashtun tribesman the dangers of smoking is likely to be shrugged off as unwelcome interference with their rights to enjoy life as they please. Likely as not the words of caution are dismissed as nonsense from naive do-gooders! So, consumption has little to do with race, a priori!

Now the same questions posed in the halls of corporate and political power don't seem to be being made. But no doubt, academics realize this and there must have been many documented, (but failed), attempts in the past to ban the export of tobacco materials to countries that do not have a program for making folk aware of the dangers of smoking. Corporate profits and revenue from sales tax are counterweights to interfering with the status quo. So we cannot expect finance ministers to be pushing for these controls. Rather we need citizen action!

Asher
 
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