Tobacco companies

I was watching one of those "Truth" commercial paid for by people who have nothing better to do then try to tell me what to do. Then I heard that a settlement against the tobacco industry was reduced from 130 million to 10 million, and I'm probably one of the few people in America that said good. As you've seen the truth commercials prove that the tobacco industry is dishonest, wow good job you've showed me that corporations lie and try to trick the consumer into using their product. What they do is certainly dispicable, but it is nothing out of the ordinary for a corporation. And each commercial they tell me something most people should already know about the tactics by advertisers to try to get consumers to use their products. Then again most people are idiots and probably do not, I apologize for having way too much faith in the American race for a second. But to single out the tobacco industry is still unfair, every industry does it.

Let's first go over the advertising side of the industry and then examine the product itself. The tobacco industry clearly is using advertising to entice people to use their product, especially in previous decades, but what industry has not. No one is suing McDonalds for making them eat their food and making them get fat, so why can they sue big tobacco. If you that dumb that your willing to admit your too dumb to make your own decision and you let advertisements make them for you then I'm surprised your still alive anyway and have not fallen over a cliff. Unless you are going to criticize all industries and their advertisers than what right do you have to go after tobacco.

Now off to the actual product. It is clearly addictive, and that is probably the biggest problem with my argument because it is not psychologically addicting like alcohol, nicotine is physically addicting. But by now every one who can read, or has a TV, or has one brain cell knows that they are dangerous. So thanks truth maybe if you get a time machine and go back to 1942 you'll might make an impact, but its 2005 everyone knows what smoking does it is on every carton so stop wasting my time and shut the hell up. Now I come from a family of smokers, and like everyone we've had our share of tragedies, but thankfully none from smoking. Now not to sound cocky but my family, like the families of all my friends, seem to possess more common sense than the average American so I can't speak for all the complete idiots in America (there are a lot the people who voted for Bush the second time make up a large portion of the complete idiots in America), but everyone I know who smokes realizes how bad it is. The argument for much of the lawsuit said they smoked before any of health reports came out. But I am going to make an argument against that, and I am going to make it as simple as possible YOU WERE BREATHING IN THE SMOKE OF TOBACCO ON FIRE, AND IT MADE YOU FEEL GOOD, DID YOU ACTUALLY THINK IT WAS GOOD FOR YOU TO BREATHE IN LARGE AMOUNTS OF SMOKE DAILY? I mean seriously were people that dumb that they did not realize this, I mean maybe my family are geniuses and knew this before. The bigger problem is peer pressure, but clearly is it much easier to blame the media and the big bad industries then the people around us. Why not blame the parents for letting their kids smoke, or their friends for getting them to try it. Or god forbid blame yourself for doing starting to smoke. I am just tired of people blaming outside forces for their problems. If some kid beats up or shoots another kid, it is tv's, or video games', or music's fault but you can never blame the parents who were never around while the kid loaded up his AK-47. How about for one time we blame our immediate environment. Why isn't everyone dropping dead immediately after touching a cigarette, oooo wait you have to make the conscious decision for years to smoke and it really does take more than one cigarette to get addicted. How about we start blaming the parents, the friends, their immediate environment instead of pointing the finger. I realize how much harder it is to take the blame for your own problems, but I am tired of America being a country of cowards and maybe we will finally start owning up to our mistakes.....then again Bush is still the president and we are still fighting a useless war so I don't have high hopes.