From the first day in 1964 when the Surgeon General of the United States publicly announced that cigarette smoking can be harmful to one's health, the tobacco industry has spend untold amounts time, resources, and money to deceivingly convince the American public into believing otherwise.
If the past 50 years have taught us anything, it's that the tobacco industry cannot be trusted to place the public's interest above their own profits no matter what they say. And what's almost unimaginable to me, is that after all those years of discovering evidence proving the contrary, they're still able to lie to us without any criminal accountability.
So if you're anything like me, you'd have to wonder why, after so many decades of proven lies, deceit, and fraud, that Big Tobacco representatives (pdf) should be allowed to provide any type of scientific advice or information to the organization that's empowered by the Government to regulate tobacco?
Source: The Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society
The way I see it, the FDA is one of the Federal regulatory agencies tightly controlled by politicians, politicians whose elections into office were funded by many of the corporations they're responsible for regulating.
ReplyDeleteSo, whose interests/agenda do you think these politicians will serve?
If there's anything you should have learned from what's occurred in this country over the past decade, it's that any type of Federal regulation that's created to protect "people" is a joke.
Hmm.. perhaps you're onto something Jason.
ReplyDeleteI noticed a couple of recent tweets from the FDA-CTP Twitter account seemingly citing youth smoking statistics in a way that favors the interests of the tobacco industry as opposed to favoring the interests of anti-tobacco activist groups and other public health providers trying to expose the full seriousness of youth nicotine addiction.
I was wondering why would they do something like that?
It was a breakthrough day in medicine in 1964 when the Surgeon General and his team of doctors finally announced just how harmful smoking cigarettes was to smokers' health. That was the day the earth stood still. Who would have known that taking such a simple step in public health would make the practice of medicine much more advanced?
ReplyDelete