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Judge Gladys Kessler yesterday approved the wording of "corrective statements" that tobacco...
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Wednesday, November 28, 2012, 2:45 AM ETJudge Gladys Kessler yesterday approved the wording of "corrective statements" that tobacco companies must use in a two-year public advertising campaign in which they have to admit that they lied about the dangers of cigarettes going as far back as 1964. The firms, which are expected to appeal, have argued that such a move violates their free speech rights.
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Judge K also ordered the companies to say “Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction". Again, this is scientifically dubious: (a) “Addiction” is not a clinically definable state; it is something that you desire that, for other reasons, you wish you didn’t. Addiction is not like an identifiable disease. Are we addicted to food? Well, yes, but in a good way! (b) Maybe the cigarette companies manipulated the taste of cigarettes to make them more attractive, just as Frito-Lay manipulates the ingredients of Doritos or Nestlé manipulates the ingredients of Kit Kat to make them more attractive. Why is this a bad thing? What else are they supposed to do?
This ruling is not law but ill-informed prejudice.
JS
They peddle poison to our kids.
The tobacco and alcohol industries both like to intimate that only the weak and the stupid have problems with their products and that Adults like you and me should have the right to choose.
The facts are that anyone who consumes either product will eventually have heath and or social problems related to that consumption.
The Australians have the right idea. You don't ban them but you remove the right to promote them in anyway.