The Food & Drug Administration (FDA), a U.S. federal government agency, has been given the power by Congress to regulate cigarettes and smoking in the U.S.
This will affect a large number of Americans, Americans who smoke. According to a 2008 report from the Center For Disease Control (CDC) the number of smokers in America is 43.4 million.
Among other things, the FDA plans to force cigarette manufacturers to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes. Nicotine is the addictive substance contained in cigarettes and, according to the government experts, reducing the amount of nicotine in cigarettes will reduce the addiction to cigarettes and make it easier for people to quit smoking. In reality, the opposite is true. If the nicotine level in cigarettes is reduced, smokers, in order to maintain the nicotine levels they are addicted to, will actually smoke MORE cigarettes. And, being forced to smoke more cigarettes, smokers will also inhale MORE of the dangerous and unhealthful chemicals in cigarettes – thus causing MORE smoking relating deaths and serious smoking related illnesses.
The real-world result of the government’s plan to reduce nicotine in cigarettes in order to reduce smoking and promote good health will have the exact opposite and even more harmful effect. Obviously, the health experts and government legislators who supported and passed this new FDA regulation of cigarettes must be non-smokers, know nothing about the smoking experience and are, in fact, seriously ignorant in not realizing that their ‘let’s regulate cigarettes and reduce nicotine content to reduce smoking’ idea would have the opposite effect and cause smokers to smoke MORE.
It’s a pity Congress didn’t bother to ask actual smokers about the real-world consequences of this ill-advised, and harmful, anti-smoking legislation … BEFORE they passed it into law!
This is a very interesting approach to the problem and one that bears thinkg about. It may be that the government has created a two-pronged approach to this matter for the sake of the tax revenues that are falling. If the increase the cigarette tax and also decrease the nicotine content in cigarettes, one could naturally assume that, in the end, the tax dollars derived from this sin tax would grow.
Obama Signs Tough New Anti-Smoking Law
Under the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the FDA will be able to ban labels on cigarettes such as "low tar" and "light," outlaw candy flavorings, and order companies to reduce nicotine in tobacco products.
Smoking An Electronic Cigarette
It is said that the FDA intends to regulate tobacco products more and make cigarette manufacturers list the ingredients, but how much less harmful are those ingredients going to be? People already know that there are thousands of harmful … So the real question is, if people have the right to smoke deadly tobacco and are allowed to by law, why should they be not allowed to smoke a product with nicotine that is thought by so many to be be much safer that tobacco?
Congress Passes Major Anti-Smoking Law
The Senate today passed a major anti-smoking law giving the Food and Drug Administration new, sweeping power to regulate tobacco products in the United States. … With the House having passed a similar bill already and the White House giving full support, the bill will soon become law granting the FDA unprecedented power in regulating nicotine content in tobacco products as well as their sale and marketing in the United States. The law will stop short of granting powers for an outright ban of tobacco.
