December 13, 2007
Tobacco is the leading preventable cause of death: cigarettes and other tobacco products kill 420,000 American smokers and 53,000 nonsmokers every year. This toll exceeds the deaths resulting from alcohol abuse, AIDS, traffic accidents, homicides, and suicides combined . Nevertheless, the tobacco industry continues to promote and sell its products, unhampered by any meaningful government regulation except for mostly local restrictions designed to protect nonsmokers from the toxins in secondhand tobacco smoke. In fact, the tobacco industry is unique among American and worldwide industries in its ability to forestall effective government regulation and to hold effective public health action at bay while marketing its lethal products. The industry manages this, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that tobacco products kill, through a combination of skilled legal, political, and public relations strategies designed to confuse the public and to allow it to avoid having to take responsibility for the death and disease it inflicts.
Posted by Gary Holden at December 13, 2007 7:13 PM