Obama signs anti-smoking Bill into law

President Obama recently signed into law a sweeping new power to limit nicotine in the cigarettes that kill nearly a half-million people a year, and to drastically curtail ads that glorify tobacco and to ban flavored products aimed at spreading the habit to young people.

President Obama, a smoker himself (his lungs are apparently too black to be president)struggling wto quit, gladly signed the bill and celebrated by lighting up a flavor full stick of, um, Arugula?

(This cigarette contains hope)

Here's a breakdown of the law:



•Creates a tobacco control center within the FDA and gives the FDA authority to regulate the content, marketing and sale of tobacco products to protect public health.


Becasue the FDA proved so capabale and compentent in regulating dog food, meat, pork, and every single pharmaceutcial in the driking water supply, so why should they be any less competent in regulating tobacco.



.•Requires tobacco companies and importers to reveal all product ingredients and seek FDA approval for any new tobacco products.


Wait, you're telling me these things don't contain fairy dust and puppy's breath? I'd take my chances with a crisp, cool unfiltered Camel than anything served in fast-food restaurants.



•Allows the FDA to change tobacco product content to protect the public health.


The most effective and very much needed law to protect the public health would be to ban Glen Beck



•Bans the use of flavors, including candies and fruit flavors, in tobacco products.


I'm sure they would think differently if they ever sucked down the glorious medley of flavors in a Bubblegum Light



•Strengthens warning labels.


Here's a working label: "We, the federal government, are a Leviathan. We know what's best for you and we want to inhibit your adult, individual choice and encroach upon your unalienable right to hack incessantly behing a dumpster in the dead of winter. We are totally cool with collecting whopping revenues, though, and arbitraily rasing the sin tax whenever we cannot balance the budget. We so vehemently don't want you to smoke that we need you to smoke so we can adequately fund SCHIP."


•Bars the use of expressions such as "light, "mild" or "low" that give the impression that a tobacco product poses less of a health risk and limit the amount of nicotine and tar in cigarettes.


Okay, ultra lights and lights are tantamount to former president Bush's Clear Skies Act and environmentally-friendly drilling. In other wards, if you smoke said products with the belief that you are somehow making a less lethal choice, then you deserve lung cancer. The bigger issue, of course, is smokers will obviously smoke MORE if the FDA reduces the amount of nicotine in a cigarette tobacco.



Now, while I hate believing anything that reflects the thinking far right-wing nutjobs, I still must say that the government cannot protect me from me. Moreover, no single person can make someone quit-- not by capricious rules, not nanny-state interference, and not by not by taxes. In short, it is incumbent upon the individual to consider his/her flouresecent yellow teeth, shortness of breath, and dwindling funds to make the bold and brave decision to quit. fuck it! Just purchase them overseas from Russia or Moldova.


Let's call this law and its supporters in Congress what it really is, a cynical pr stunt for morally righteous politicians to feel good about themselves while still gladly taking in revenues from the tobacco industry.