Posted by For Truth, a resident of Stanford, on Jul 21, 2012 at 11:09 am

Very well written news article. Enjoyed reading it and shared it with friends.

Posted by Anon., a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Jul 21, 2012 at 11:48 am

There is also the story about how all our furniture and clothing has flame retardant in it. The tobacco companies were putting chemicals into cigarettes to keep them burning, and of course sell more cigarettes too.

Since there were so many fires from people falling asleep and their cigarettes that used to just fixxle out would catch their beds, clothes or furniture on fire, Ralph Nader demanded that cigarette companies remove the chemicals from cigarettes that keep them burning.

The cigarette company's answer was to put flame retardant in clothes, pajamas, mattresses, instead of removing the chemicals. Now thanks for these murdering sleaze bags we all have sleep in bedding and mattresses that have carsinogenic chemicals in them out gassing into our lungs all night.

American capitalism is sick, it is sick because the people who got an inordinate amount of money from things like cigarettes can now take their capital with the help of financial experts and send it overseas to undermine our country, they can buy up all the regular businesses - simply because they got money, capital, from what are virtually crimes in the past, and now the money looks clean and productive, but it is managed by the same defective people who now have grown to the level where they threaten everyone, not just smokers or people around smokers.

Even raising taxes on these people is not going to bring about justice or restore democracy to our nation, we need to make sure that defective immoral criminals cannot amass amounts of money that will corrupt our system - or in our case do "something" retroactively to remove these people and confiscate their ill gotten gains.

Posted by village fool, a resident of another community, on Jul 21, 2012 at 4:09 pm

May I recommend an older movie, great summer fun - "Thank you for smoking.."

We can only blame ourselves. Writings are always on the walls.

Posted by Sharon, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Jul 21, 2012 at 5:13 pm

400,000 + Americans die premature and painful deaths from smoking related diseases every year-the rate of smoking is going down fast

-@ Stanford it is less than 2%.

In Palo Alto smokers are pariahs-rightly so

The problem is not nicotine-it is the delivery system-smoking.

In Sweden they have the lowest rate of smoking and smoking related deaths in Europe-because nicotine addict use snus-

-which does not cause cancer etc and is now legal in the US.

If you want to use nicotine use a safe delivery system.

300,500 Americans die premature and painful deaths from obesity and the rates of morbid obesity have increased dramatically over the last 15 years.

Smokers die young, fast and cheap-their is no cure for lung cancer.

The obese linger on with expensive chronic diseases like diabetes

They progressively lose their limbs, sight and mind-

-at huge expense for health care.

The obesity epidemic will soon bankrupt the US health care system

Smoking in the US is declining rapidly and nicotine addicts can use snus-patches etc

Obesity in the US is increasing rapidly but fat people do not curb their eating nor exercise--the cure is simple-eat less and exercise-

- they will not do it

Obesity is the major health cost issue in the US moving forward-

-and it is getting worse

Posted by Anon., a resident of the Crescent Park neighborhood, on Jul 21, 2012 at 5:33 pm

As I said earlier, it is not necessarily smoking, it is the greed and immorality of business people who sell cigarettes, who put chemicals in cigarettes, who force us to surround ourselves with carcinogenic flame retardant clothes and furniture … then when faced with regulation they took their untold tens or hundreds of billions and bought Kraft food and are doing the same thing with junk food.

You know what Altria is?

Anyway, a lot of these companies study how to take advantage and manipulate human behavior which causes addictive behavior, stress, cancer and obesity as well. But, we gotta be free to kill ourselves and bankrupt the country in American.

Posted by Truth, a resident of another community, on Jul 21, 2012 at 5:38 pm

According to the National Institutes of Health (Web Link) tobacco (snus) causes oral cancer, esophageal cancer, and pancreatic cancer.

It may also cause heart disease, gum disease, and oral lesions other than cancer, such as leukoplakia (precancerous white patches in the mouth) It is addictive. There's no safe tobacco.

Posted by Sharon, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Jul 21, 2012 at 6:26 pm

@ Truth--it is dead fake link-typical

Extensive longitudinal research in Sweden shows that Snus is not a significant health risk.

Nicotine is not the health problem-smoking tobacco to get it is the health problem.

Sweden keeps much better public health statistics than we do

Snus Web Link

Is a safe delivery system for nicotine-like patches and lozenges-but much cheaper-

Is now legal in the US-but not in Europe or Israel-

-people in Israel and Germany, Greece- etc smoke like chimneys and die like flies from lung cancer-it is a horrible and very painful way to die.

Obesity is a major health risk factor for breast, bowel and prostate cancer, diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer disease, dementia etc-etc

Clearly people should not smoke and they should not allow themselves to get fat by overeating.

Posted by village fool, a resident of another community, on Jul 22, 2012 at 2:18 am

Anon- greed and immortality is not "reserved" only to corporate America executives. Those symptoms can be found also in the public service, affecting those who make big $ and impacting our health (and our kids health). Power, you know.

Posted by Sharon, a resident of the Midtown neighborhood, on Jul 23, 2012 at 5:47 pm

We suppose the author using the term " holocaust" fits as in the last 10 years almost 5 million Americans have died premature and very painful deaths from smoking related illnesses

Moving forward many more will die in similar fashion from obesity related illness-

-which will soon bankrupt the US health care system