The unstoppable march of the tobacco giants

[Huseng]

The Independent has a good article on the state of the global tobacco industry:

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 90583.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This really stood out:

"...they have risen from 5,000 billion sticks a year in the 1990s to 5,900 billion a year in 2009. They now kill more people annually than alcohol, Aids, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders and suicides combined."

So, consumption has increased, not decreased. Moreover, tobacco is killing more people than crime. That should be a crime, but isn't.

I've always found tobacco so disgusting. It really is an evil that should be eradicated, but is so pervasive in the world. Here in Japan they are only now slowly starting to seriously provide for non-smokers. Some trendy places like Starbucks are smoke-free, but the lot of places welcome smokers. You can't have a coffee in a lot of places without walking away with your clothes smelling like an ashtray. In China it was worse. I had to take an 18 hour train ride and nearly everyone inside the car smoked. There was a big sign at the front prohibiting smoking, but nobody cares.

[ronnewmexico]

Shame..

Developeing nations see the positive to western consumer oriented capitalism, never the negative.
Unrestricted greed with no counterbalance in some places of legal recourse for damages leaves the field wide open.
So a product which produces profit but with consequential signfiicant detriment to society due to healh implications and necessary care is allowed and encouraged to exist.

Unfortunately capatilism to really work and not be overall a detriment to society needs strict strict regulation.
Unfortunately the western model which so many try to replicate is quite deficient in that regard.
The outcomes like the economic collapse of 2008 can be quite quite disasterous and far reaching.
We were within a hairbreadth of all shipping stopping. All due to inadequate regulation and means to stop things detrimental to societies from existing.
That was credit derivitives....this is smoking.

REgulation is the issue.
Regulated now in the west is smoking, due quite largly in response to litigation. In a country or countries where litigation may not be possible for the average person such impetus to regulate by government becomes nonexistant.

[Huseng]

Ronn -- there is also the issue that in developing countries the ruling elite have much to gain by allowing the tobacco companies free reign in their countries.

[ronnewmexico]

The ruling elite in the US were in a parallel situation in the early to mid part of the 20th century in the US as well.

Scientists were in fact employed to counter each and every contention of health detriment claimed
And athletes and such were employed to show just how postive a thing this was, the best of the best physically did it.
To the extent was this thing pushed by the elite that K rations the foods given to GI's in WW2 and Korea....contaned always 2 cigarettes with them... given free of charge to the government....patriotic it was said to be. The powers that may have been involved such as various not for profit cancer institutions refused quite corruptly for many a year to link lung cancer to cigarettes. Not till the seventies did they publically advocate against that thing.
The american medical association and such...many of the adds had docs smokeing in their offices.....comically and tragically.

Litigation was largly the mover the governmental mover of last resort. The government being in a quite quite percarious position of potentially become part cause of death and destruction of americans. Not successful litigation...but the positions all were put into by the evidenciary produced subsequent to it.

So consequent to that mechanism it changed.
With no potential of litigation...I'd say good luck with that, the elites will control and continue.

No real potential for litigation exists subsequent to issues such as global warming in the US. The elites will have no part of it useing the same playbook of action basically to fight it, and with no potential of litigation to bring the facts of the situation to light....they win. And will continue until catastrophy bears out and forces the issue.

Litigation levels the playing field. The states in the US entering into a group action (though of course not hardly known about) against the tabbacco companies to retrieve health care consequent costs to medicaid.... That is essentially what capped this thing in the US...ended it...its death is just long in coming. The elites could not control the large amount of states though they could certainly control the federal government.

So without litigation as a potential, the elites will control and smoking will continue. It is not the peoples in the US who just decided to stop this thing.
It seems that way now but no it was not that way. Litigation forced it, exposed it then the people gradually came on board.

Individually none of the specific suits suceeded. Through threat of this however such as the collective group action of the states the tobacco companies could not continue. The judiciary would eventually have to find for damage, this thing was just growing exponentially, and they saw the writings on the wall.

And moved out and exported to countries with no potential of litigation.

Actually on a federal level in the US, even though the companies are dead men walking as far as US tobacco is concerned, the FDA still does not regulate this as a controlled substance. When it is quite obvious within their purview. The elites fight to the end you see. Peoples and their opinions are only minipulations to be engaged.

[Huseng]

The powers that may have been involved such as various not for profit cancer institutions refused quite corruptly for many a year to link lung cancer to cigarettes. Not till the seventies did they publically advocate against that thing.
The american medical association and such...many of the adds had docs smokeing in their offices.....comically and tragically.

This reminds me of the responses I read to this study:

Cancer 'is purely man-made' say scientists after finding almost no trace of disease in Egyptian mummies

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... mmies.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

One cancer association representative said it was lack of exercise and poor diet, not industrial pollution, that caused cancer.

I almost wonder if that isn't a clever way to deceive people. Just tell them they are not exercising enough or eating right and so they're getting cancers and other diseases which were quite rare in pre-Industrial times. It sounds reasonable. Lack of exercise and poor diet makes you fat and lethargic, but is it really the main reason for vast numbers of cancer cases in our modern industrialized world?

If the intellectual powers that be actually said it was industrial pollution that was causing our cancers, asthma and other diseases, it would logically follow that largescale de-industrialization would be the optimal path to direct society. That isn't going to bode well for a lot of people with vested interests in industry.

[ronnewmexico]

I put nothing/no evil action, beyond or not capeable of being done by those motivated by economic desires.

History is repleat with examples of such.

Luckily for us..this thing passses like a flash of lightening in the dark. Their fate/continuance is a quite quite dimly lite one I am afraid.

[Huseng]

I put nothing/no evil action, beyond or not capeable of being done by those motivated by economic desires.

History is repleat with examples of such.

Luckily for us..this thing passses like a flash of lightening in the dark. Their fate/continuance is a quite quite dimly lite one I am afraid.

Nāgārjuna has the following quote in the Tree of Wisdom:

If your wife is evil and your friend evil,
If the King is evil and your relatives evil,
If your neighbour is evil and the country evil,
(Then) abandon them for a distant (land).

Unfortunately in our present day it is not so easy to abandon one land and go to another to escape evil. It permeates every realm with the globalization of various evils.

To some extent you have to participate in evil even if it is under duress. That's the modern day condition.

[ronnewmexico]

Yes I agree.

That is actually a very good teaching to my personal opinion.
This realm is a impossibility of nonharm. We kill to live. So that perhaps is a (self instigated of course) teaching of sorts.

We always invariably tend towards the absolutely right..... way, type, form, whatever to be.... when such in our form is never possible.
So some tend towards absolutism, as in finding of a thing or way of being which does not include these things of dichatomy.
Like some expecting to become a great saint and replicating their every action while waiting for hours in a MVD line and being told when first in line the line is now closed. Or debating for hours the moral implication of swatting at a mosquito in swamp filled africa knowing fully well one mosquito may contain malaria.

The inverse application of that thing being the nihilist extreem interpretation....since no perfect action is possible no action therefor is perferable to another.

It is certainly almost impossible for us to find another place that is not like that at present, and if we did know of one certainly they would not take us.