Read this on Digg today:
From today’s ruling against the tobacco companies: “Judge Kessler ordered the companies to stop labeling cigarettes as “low tar” or “light” or “natural” or with other “deceptive brand descriptors which implicitly or explicitly convey to the smoker and potential smoker that they are less hazardous to health than full-flavor cigarettes.””
Ok. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke as much as the next non-smoker with ulfactory senses still in tact, but this stuff is crazy! In Colorado where I live there has been a state wide ban on cigarette smoke in all establishments including clubs and bars. Now they are telling the cigarette companies that they are misleading the public? Come on! Do you really think that with all of the bans on cigarette smoking and continued growth in public loathing that these people just are too dumb to get it? Let’s fix the packaging now so that these people will finally “understand”? Hello? It’s a choice, people. People who smoke do so on purpose. They’re not being tricked into it.
Anyhow, I just think the government gets their hands in too much. They go too far. Use of any of the terms listed are relative terms and non of them are intentionally misleading. Does anyone really believe that any cigarette is safe? I have no opinion of the tobacco companies. They are a business like any other business that produces something with consumption risks and the government rightly did require them to warn about the use of their products. That is a good use of government authority, but this? This is just stupid. Continuing to force the companies to change their practices without expecting the “poor saps who don’t get it” to change theirs is just ludicrous. What the heck happened to people taking responsibilities for their own actions? It’s unreal.
Ok. I’m done.