"Hitler's death camps used cigarettes' major toxic chemicals, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide (the Nazis called the latter Zyklon-B) to kill". Robert J. Lifton's Robert J. Lifton's The Nazi Doctors (N.Y.: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1986), pp 32, 71-72, 143, 157-162, 170, 290, 405, 453-454, 462 and 493)
The World Health Organization has memorialized that worldwide, out of 5.8 billion people, there are 1.1 billion smokers. Over half of all regular cigarette smokers die prematurely with great pain and handicap because of the deleterious effects of industrial tobacco, to which so many additives and chemicals are added. Smoking cigarette tobacco kills over 5 millions tobacco consumers in the world each year. If we do not change current trends, tobacco will kill 10 million people a year by 2030. The People have paid and continue to pay a high price for the Big Tobacco-Politician Axis. In the United States, from 1995 to 2000, the tobacco industry poured tens of millions of dollars into political donation campaign pockets while the U. S. Social Security Administration and the American People paid many billions of dollars for tobacco related health costs. In addition, during these five years, some 2.5 million Americans died of tobacco-related diseases and some 6.5 million teenagers-young adults became addicted (based on statistics of the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention).
With over 400,000 tobacco dead Americans each year, 3000 new tobacco addict adolescents get hooked each day, thanks to political complacency and to the Rehnquist’s court abdication to Reason, that which led the FDA to lose its tobacco control case, notwithstanding the countervailing role of the Judiciary and the FDA’s complacency .
And if the FDA was not able to assert jurisdiction over tobacco on the basis of being a drug or medical device, it is precisely because of what tobacco is above all else: a deadly poison, which includes both massive amounts of carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide.
"Hitler's death camps used cigarettes' major toxic chemicals, carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide (the Nazis called the latter Zyklon-B) to kill". Robert J. Lifton's Robert J. Lifton's The Nazi Doctors (N.Y.: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1986), pp 32, 71-72, 143, 157-162, 170, 290, 405, 453-454, 462 and 493)
A few of the other elements therein:
“…acetaldehyde, arsenic, benzoapyrene, cadmium, coumarin, crotonaldehyde, chromium, ethylcar bamate, formaldehyde, hydrazine, lead, nickel and radioactive polonium, acetaldehyde, acrolein, ammonia, carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide, hydrogen sulfide, methyl chloride, nitrogen dioxide.” (This data is from the Surgeon General report, 1964, p 60 and 1989, pp 86-7.).
Many more poisons exists in industrial tobacco, different solvents so that the cigarette paper burns faster, tobacco companies used to even put anti-freeze and asbestos (in the filter), inter alia, all for the safeguarding of corporate cash flow.. Today, big tobacco adds sweeteners and chocolate to make cigarettes more palatable to children and first time users. Moreover, sugar potentiates the effects of the additives, so there is more sugar in the anglo-saxon cigarettes, that which proportionately leads to more lung cancers in relation to those manufacturers which use less sugar ( CLICK HERE to examine a “tobacco and the law” book on a five years court effort that started at the King county superior Court and ended at the US supreme Court and the inter-American human rights Commission).
Eugenol and menthol is used to numb the throat so the smoker cannot feel the smoke's aggravating effects as much. Additives such as cocoa may be used to dilate the airways allowing the smoke an easier and deeper passage into the lungs exposing the body to more nicotine and higher levels of tar and hundreds of other toxic agents while big tobacco's marketing strategists instruct its lieutenants to focus its tobacco domestic efforts on adolescent and young adults (those who are rebellious to authority), incorporating within a cigarette pack metal music devices, chocolate flavor, enticing sexual figures, while, in the Third World the Poor will get free cigarettes and once hooked, the tobacco barons will request big money, these are the people who have been regularly promoted by the American medical Association Journal's in the 1940s and 1950s and the same people who have financed electoral campaigns of those politicians who were willing to accept tobacco money for their campaign, not all politicians, but too many who became judges, lawmakers and executive officials. Hereinafter a few respectfully proposed measures to contribute in solving this challenge.
MEASURE 1. LEGISLATION OF DETERING CIGARETTE LABLES AND MORE TOBACCO CESSATION WORKSHOPS. Stricter legislation is needed in this crucial field. Because this priority must be one of the starting points to any credible and effective public health and public finance scheme. To begin, we need effective tobacco legislation based on persuasive labels (with tobacco damage label pictures like in Brazil and Canada) and better tobacco holistic health cessation education and detox workshops must be organized in our 39 counties, in collaboration with the Plan's human rights and duties lighthouses centers.
MEASURE 2. HIGHER TAXES AND TOBACCO DONATIONS EXPOSURE: Thenceforth, a two to three years conversion and high tax plan (double taxation for the first year with a progressive rhythm thereafter) would be desirable. In this perspective, all big tobacco campaign donations to Legislators and Judges should be posted in all public buildings and online, in conformity with an eventual executive order.
MEASURE 3. ARGUING BEFORE THE PEOPLE AND THE STATE LEGISLATURE THE APPLICATION OF THE NUREMBER PRECEDENT:Once the above is accomplished, we would need to unwaveringly argue and demonstrate to the State Legislature and to the People that article 6 of our Federal Constitutions introduces the legal force of public international law on crimes against Humanity within the State’s jurisdiction. As a result, the Nuremberg precedent applies. Then, the Nuremberg trials condemned the Krupps company for making the poisons that destroyed Jews and other minorities. We find the same poisons in today’s tobacco. We can therefore argue “mass poisoning”. With intent. Since the tobacco companies know that their product leads to death. Even if death is delayed, it can still be a homicide, provided the element of intent is established. This argument may put an end to this death industry (industrial and processed tobacco) which affects one in five Americans.
The counter argument of "bootlegging" like during the alcohol prohibition era can not prevail, because wine and moderate alcohol beverage consumption is not poisonous, on the contrary, they clean out clogged arteries (See via google the "French paradox" studies on this), while industrial tobacco narrows and destroys arteries and most human tissues, including our animal friends lungs via second hand smoke.
MEASURE 4. A REASONABLE TIME-TABLE SO THAT TOBACCO COMPANIES WHO DEAL IN WASHINGTON STATE CONVERT PEACEFULLY TO MORE BENEFICIAL PRODUCTS. For those companies and tobacco distributors who cooperate and timely convert this necro-product to pro-life products and services (e.g. industrial kudzu or hemp (the non medicinal one) mass plantation for example) and finance tobacco cessation workshops for all smokers (including, but not limited to a tobaccco-industry paid ten days hot spring spa and holistic health detox center for all smokers), they will be treated with equity and dignity and their employees will be assisted in finding better work, including transforming the amino acids contained in tobacco into protein food bars. Those tobacco owners (and their accomplices) who do not cooperate will go to jail for mass murder, first or second degree, depending no the "intent" and with the Legislature’s legislative support. To refuse to pay heed to this historical necessity is to allow the destruction of over 5 millions innocent lives each year, (over 400,000 of whom are American lives), not to mention the many hundreds of billions of dollars this mess and our complacency cost us. However, natural (or better organic) tobacco growing in one's garden for strictly personal use must remain protected as a constitutional right, if only because the tobacco plant is an excellent organic pesticide.