Well the now semi-infamous tobacco settlement has settled into the dust that is our national news. You will no longer hear a word about the reparations being made by the tobacco industry. The retirement of Joe Camel and the Marlboro Man barley received mention in the side bars of many newspapers.
I am in no way trying to jump to the defense of a group who purposely targets children in their advertising, falsifies their research and basically makes millions off of selling people death.
When I first heard of the lucrative lawsuit filed against the industry I was a bit pleased. I thought that perhaps with the money they received they could make more advances in the fight against cancer or just give the people a tax break.
Unfortunately, the only real action of the lawsuit which had any effect on me was now my little packs of cancer or death cost me about $3. That is, until the cost will once more rise to cover the expense of their settlement. So now I and many other will soon be paying cancer merchants $4 per pack and so on and so forth.
I can understand what they are having to do. It is the way a business works. But my biggest question is, why hasn’t Budweiser or the “alcohol industry” felt any squeeze from our protective government?
I will more than likely take a beating for this, but here it goes.
Alcohol is just as, if not more dangerous than cigarettes or chewing tobacco. How many people smoke a pack of cigarettes and then wrap their car around a tree or go home and beat their wife after having a cigar? Alcoholism accounts for more problems than “cigaretteism.” Hey wait, there isn’t even such a thing as “cigaretteism!” Perhaps its because there is no need for such a term.
Well, I won’t go on with my little comparisons, but there are a few discrepancies in the logic of suing the tobacco industry and not the alcohol industry. They do many of the same things that the government charged the tobacco industry of doing. Sure Joe Camel was appealing to kids, but why did the infamous frogs and weasels make it onto T-shirts smaller than my fist? Try and greet a child under the age of 10, and more than likely you’ll receive the familiar moronic “Wassup?” as a greeting from someone at least 10 years away from legally purchasing liquor. Alcohol can cause a plethora of problems ranging from family discourse to having your liver rot within the insides of your body.
The alcohol industry even goes a step further and uses extremely beautiful women to peddle their beer to fat-bellied guys with low self-esteem who actually have a subliminal hope of a beach party appearing in their houses after “tapping the Rockies” or whatever lame landmark they think will sell a few more cases.
So why is it that an industry that targeted a younger market with their ad campaigns and poisoned people with harmful carcinogens was literally singled out when there is an almost clone industry doing the same, but exchange lung cancer with liver disease?
All I really want from our government is fairness. I know that both are not the most honorable of industries, so why not penalize them both and therefore gain twice as much retribution, or money?
If they are going to target the tobacco industry for such atrocities, I expect them to go after everyone. Because if cigarettes ever cost more than beer I’m going to become an alcoholic, just because it’d be cheaper.
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