No surprise that the Tobacco industry cares little for the fact its product is extremely unhealthy.

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Money , Money, Money, afterall it rules the industry. Health? They dont care.

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Legalize pot. Every tobacco company closes in a week.

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If you smoke, you're not only supporting this evil corporate cabal but you also contribute to animal torture. Cat penises? That's the tip of the iceberg. They also torture baby monkeys (to test the affect of smoking on human fetuses... not kidding). You can read all about it here: www.upinsmokecampaign.org.

I was a smoker for 20 years. If I had known about the sick things the tobacco industry is into, and the horrible "scientists" who get huge grants from the gov't to torture animals, I would have stopped much sooner, or never smoked at all in the first place.

What a horrible, needless thing the tobacco industry is. If they were smart, they could use their millions & move into some other healthy line of work. Instead, they control the gov't and keep killing folks with their nasty products.

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every day, the similar kind of news appears on the top of page. someone like to discuss it with other on sites,like SugarmommyMeet.com. it specially is designed to cater to rich women seeking young and charming men. those men are spoiled and supported

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Smoking a truckload of hemp would give you at best a mild headache. Tobacco, on the other hand, ain't so kind. You do know that Big Tobacco was another vested interest who saw to it that Cannabis was taxed OBSCENELY high 71 years ago followed by an outright ban, do you? For the life of me, I cannot understand why the progressives and liberals refuse to fight to ABOLISH the FDA and DEA as those two agencies give "free" passes to Big Pharma and Big Tobacco to POISON the public to death while at the same time overregulating or even banning natural alternatives such as hemp and stevia. They should not be joining the "conservatives" on the "reefer madness" and Citizen NAZI Kane bullshit. I would expect this nonsense from the Far Right not the Far Left. Maybe the progressive/liberal movements are null and void for now?

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The tobacco industry knows that it is in the nictotine delivery business, and that addiction to nictotine (a very potent poison - one drop in pure form will kill you) is the basis of their sales.

They also know that children who start smoking are the likliest to become addicts, so they market heavily to children, even though it is illegal. Walk into any tobbaco dealer or gas station and you'll see sugary sweet cigarillos - all the rage among the younger generation.

Seriously - what do you think that the statistics are for smoking among 7th-8th graders in the U.S.? Guess.

Then look here: TABLE 1: .Percentage of students in middle school (grades 6–8) who were current users* of any tobacco product, by product type, sex, and race/ethnicity — National Youth Tobacco Survey, United States, 2002 and 2004

About 10%, more or less. By the time they get to high school, the numbers are around 25 to 30%. That's how tobacco companies make their money. You may have thought that selling tobacco to minors is illegal - but when have you ever seen any store lose its tobacco license? I never have - but it happens all the time with liquor.

The same is true for the pharmaceutical lobby and the soda and junk food lobby - kids are the number one target. Ritalin, Coke, whatever you can get the little tykes hooked on - it's the first step in turning a human being into a lifelong consumer of approved products.

Another great story is the effort to develop GMO high-nicotine tobacco:

The most pernicious effort was Kool-maker Brown and Williamson's effort to increase the nicotine levels, and thereby the addictiveness of products made from them in 1994. The tobacco strain, known as Y-1, had its nicotine content upped to over six percent from the standard 2.5-3 percent found in cured tobacco.

As David Kessler, commissioner of the FDA, told Congress back then:

We now know that a tobacco company commercially developed a tobacco plant with twice the nicotine of standard flue-cured tobacco; that several million pounds of this high-nicotine tobacco are currently stored in warehouses; and that this tobacco was put into cigarettes that have been sold nationwide.

Not that any smokers would have actually known that they were smoking twice as potent a drug. Unlike other pharmaceutical companies, tobacco producers do not have to reveal what is actually in their products. As Mitch Zeller, the FDA's former tobacco control czar said, "You can get a full list of ingredients on dog food and shampoo, but not on cigarettes."

Yes, but cannabis must be kept illegal...ridicuous.

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Same old stuff.

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About forty years ago. This was the result of several things. First and foremost was the clear and unambiguous fact that tobacco is a KILER in all its forms. The research was done, and the facts were there for all to see. Second is I was, and still am, CHEAP, and ciggies were up to 50 cents a pack at the Navy Exchange. Third, was the realization that the tobacco companies didn't give the slightest damn if their customers lived or died as long as they continued buying their toxic product. I decided not to support the no-good sons of bitches in the tobacco industry any more, and went from two packs of unfiltered Camels a day to ZERO, cold turkey.

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> Normally, nitric oxide is a free radical pollutant belched from cars and
> factories, but who knew that having it mainlined into your penis from a
> couple of needles would give you an erection? Well, Tulane evidently,
> and now you. It's may be a urologist's dream, but most likely it's a cat's
> worst nightmare.

Not only is it a pollutant, but it's also a key signalling molecule in vertebrates. If they were injecting the cats with a saline solution would you say, "they're being injected with a compound made from an explosive metal and a poisonous gas!"? Not that what they're doing to those animals isn't bad, but adding your own bias into the mix doesn't help.

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And what about those poor CATS ? The author, Scott Thill, leaves us hanging about WHEN this happened, what the PURPOSE was, and WHAT HAPPENED to the CATS ? Has Tulane University STOPPED this sick graduate school maddness?

Vivisection is a nightmare, never useful, and a crime against sacred LIFE. My father is a neuro-physiologist. And going to see "Daddy at work" was to witness the smell of death, see monkeys strapped down to chairs with their skulls sawed in half and one eye sewn shut... to say nothing of the cages of CATS, KITTENS & Rats & Mice, and all they did to them... It truly sickens me what humans do with our God-given intelligence to slaughter our fellow creatures in the name of science, experimentation, job promotion, ego gratification, and to gain the feeling of toxic power.

Scott Thill ~ please don't use such trauma on animals in a sarcastic article on wierd science without bringing a little closure to that section. There is no resolution about the purpose or outcome of such harm to the CATS... Please be more respectful of the lives impacted and then paraded out as the title and then only mentioned in the body of your article. I read the article because of the title, to find out about the cats, but was very disapointed in your comic tone and disrespect of these lives.

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Here they are:

Barclays Global Investors UK Holdings Ltd--$6,971,073,306
STATE STREET CORPORATION--$6,820,324,159
AXA--$6,494,580,330
Capital World Investors--$5,716,438,126
Capital Research Global Investors--$5,053,664,258
VANGUARD GROUP, INC. (THE)--$4,738,564,057
DAVIS SELECTED ADVISERS, LP--$3,539,515,322
MORGAN STANLEY--$3,303,826,045
DEUTSCHE BANK AKTIENGESELLSCHAFT--$3,273,219,169
BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION--$2,997,604,606

Those are the major shareholders and their holdings in Altria Group, the holding company for Philip Morris. Three layers of protection for the shareholders - the tobacco companies get sued, but that's just the cost of doing business - the principals never get touched, or mentioned, because all the above firms are in some sense fronts or holding companies themselves.

Well, forget all that - what does it look like on the ground?

In the U.S., tobacco is grown on more than 650,000 acres in over 20 states, primarily in the southern region of the country.2 The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that at least 25.6 million pounds of pesticides are used on this crop each year.3 The list includes pesticides that are extremely acutely toxic, pesticides that may cause cancer or birth defects, and others that are potent nerve toxins. In fact, over 450 different pesticide products are registered for use on tobacco by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

However, that's dwarfed by the use in the Southern countries where most tobacco is now grown:

Exposure of young children working on Mexican tobacco plantations to organophosphorous and carbamic pesticides:

Background Organophosphorous (OP) and carbamic pesticides are used in large quantities on tobacco plantations in Nayarit State, Mexico, where up to 3000 children and their families work. OP and carbamic pesticides are easily inhaled or absorbed through the skin and children may be particularly vulnerable to pesticides because of their smaller body mass, their height and more regular hand- mouth contact.

The same thing goes on right here in the United States on tobacco farms - even without unregulated pesticide use, the stuff is toxic (it makes a good biodegradable insecticide, tho!)
U.S. tobacco immigrant labor:

"Like many tobacco migrant workers, Ponciano-Carrillo sometimes suffers from what is known as green tobacco sickness (GTS). According to the Center for Disease Control, GTS is an illness that results from exposure to dissolved nicotine from wet tobacco leaves. Thousands of tobacco workers fall victim to the illness each year. The symptoms include nausea, weakness, abdominal cramps, and changes in blood pressure and heart rates.

Grow hemp instead!

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RE: 1998 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Cocaine.
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes /medicine/laureates/1998/press.html

Cocaine does the same thing that Viagra does - perhaps not as specifically, but same effect:

"Nitric oxide as a mediator of cocaine-induced penile erection in the rat."

"Local application of cocaine to the penis induce priapism, a condition of prolonged erection..."

"These observations imply that NO plays an important role in both the initiation and maintenance of tumescence following cocaine administration"

Yes - right now, researchers are giving rats erections by feeding them cocaine... all for the benefit of the public's healthy sex life. Stranger than fiction, isn't it?

Right now, there is a struggle for control of the flaccid penis market being waged by a number of companies, including Pfizer (Viagra), Eli Lilly (Cialis), and Bayer-GSK (Levitra).

So on behalf of the Latin American cocaine importers, both the FARC and the paramilitaries, allow me to remind you that there is always the fourth market alternative. What we really need to do is legalize cocaine so I can set up my fair trade coca leaf import business - "All Natural Stiffies from the South American Highlands" - working directly with small cooperatives of Andean villagers to ensure that they get a fair price. Don't worry, Mr. Escobar - only hippies will go for this, not Republicans.

Pay attention, all tobacco users - if you are having any libido problems due to heavy smoking, there are solutions - all that rat penis stimulation and cat ball massaging hasn't been for nothing.

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Something that scared me to quit for all you nik fiends out there of which I claim no sainthood. Is that I accidentally became convinced there has to be something not quite right with the ingredients. By way of the fact that we are not told what the hook recipe is. Worse I once tried to dry out a wet cigarette in a microwave. Made the mistake of setting it not for 10 secs but 1.00 minute. Question here, tabacco, natural leaf, yes !, paper and filter simple inert materials, yes ! Wrong, I ended up with an exploding and flashing scientific experiment, I repeated again to see that I wasn't imagining things. sure same again. I made a radical choice from that lesson, still havn't found out what was or is in it. It's a federal patent secret.

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My fellow Americans,

I come to you in a time of great peril, in which our most basic rites have been taken from us and we do nothing. What good is the constitution without Habeous Corpus? If the government never has to charge you with a crime and can hold you indefinitely simply because they label you an enemy combatant then what good is the Constitution? If we vote on electronic machines that don't print a paper receipt and therefore are impossible to validate then what good is our vote?

If we don't fix these two most basic rites then we will never have what our founders fought for and created for us, EQUALITY AND FREEDOM.

The terrorists are winning, but who are the terrorists?

Call your representative and demand your vote be validated.


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9841.html

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Yeah, pot CAN INDEED be used to help people quit smoking. For most people it would work perfectly. My story:

In the late 70s I was a single mother of three little children. I had been smoking since I was 14 (cause I thought it was COOL--like all us kids did, back then in the 50s). I got this job that was overkill to the max, and I began to smoke more and more heavily. I was soon smoking up to 4 packs a day (my day was almost 20 hours long. And when the cigarette companies raised the price of my smokes I panicked, knowing I couldn't afford even 2 let alone 4 packs, at the new price.

Anyway: I was told by a friend at work--who I had known to be a smoker who had successfully quit smoking the year before--that I could quit by smoking pot, only I should do it over a weekend when I wasn't driving anywhere. I took her advice: one Friday night, I got my supply, bought for the occasion--rolled me some joints, and I reached for one.

It was the simplest thing in the world. Every time I craved a cigarette, I smoked a joint instead. I stayed high as a kite for a day and a half--and then I began to cut down on the joints. AT THE END OF THAT WEEKEND I HAD QUIT MY 4-PACK A DAY CIGARETTE HABIT. The occasional joint was all it took to calm me down if I got upset, and eventually I didn't need that either. My kids watched me go through the process--result? None of them smoked! When they got to the age when their peers were pushing cigs at them, they could all say NO, they'd watched me quit. They HATED the smell of pot, so there was no chance they'd ever be given some hard-drug-laden joint to hook them, either. I got clean, they STAYED clean--and that was 38 years ago! And I haven't gone back to cigs yet--even though I quit smoking joints the following week.

Back in the 60s, Liggett Myers and Brown & Williamson had, anticipating legalization of pot which had by then become known as far less harmless as cigarettes, set aside plots of land for cultivating marijuana. BUT THEN, some of the people who quit using cigarettes by smoking joints, came to the head honchos attention. Head honchos abandoned their plan to offer legal pot to people. And they got seriously behind the IL-legalization of marijuana--even MEDICAL MARIJUANA (to ease terminal cancer patients' pain, isn't that FILTHY of the cigarette companies?) as a result. Reason?

It takes a lot less marijuana to make the average person feel better about their life, than it does for tobacco cigarettes--which are an ever-INCREASING instead of an ever-DECREASING, need. NOBODY was gonna make any money off of pot if it was legalized, and it could kill their cash cow tobacco, and L&M and B&W both came to see that, quickly enough to keep pot ILLEGAL.

That guy fron Thailand who says that grass "doesn't help you get off of cigarettes" must belong to a cigarette company. They're still promoting their packs of death and lies, all over the globe--and trying to make pot illegal all over the world, as well. To him I say BS. I have all the willpower of a marshmallow and I got off cigarettes in the course of one weekend--and then gradually quit smoking the pot as well; though I suspect that if pot were to be legalized (and therefore, regulated) I'd sprinkle my weekends with a joint or two, once in a while.

Only one caveat I'd make, to those who'd try it, and that's driving. As opposed to tobacco cigarettes (which usually heighten reflexes), pot DOES slow your reflexes, somewhat--at least, it did mine--so I don't recommend any joints for at least 8 hours before you start driving.

Oh and one other thing--it's not necessary to smoke pot to get the desired, calming effect. You can always (LOL) bake it into brownies! (If you are any kind of a baker, that is! I never was--on OR off pot, LOL!).

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http://www.news-medical.net/?id=30858

Addiction modifies brain pathways, affecting judgement so addicts don't actually understand what they are doing. If they understood what they were doing, they wouldn't smoke! Hello! Remember that when you deal with a smoker.

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Respect yourself and stop smoking or do not start.

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I'm a bit shocked to see an article in Alternet demonizing a drug, and using the same techniques as the drug warriors, to do so!
How could you repeat that "second hand smoke" myth, a myth created by the anti-tobacco interests, and bolstered by a cooked study, a study vacated by a federal judge years ago, (and which has been followed by many more, making ever wilder claims), and use the kind of Reefer Madness headline, and sensationalist writing, the drug warriors have always employed?
Why do you mention this "cat study"? Simply for the sake of the lurid details, I imagine. In what context was this experiment being done? Guess we don't need to know. The important thing is that Big Tobacco was doing it, and it's gross!
We now all know smoking is bad for your health, if some of us didn't before, but some of us still choose to use it, anyway. I thought this was the kind of informed choice Alternet would support?

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