Even though the state of Virginia, the home state of Marlboro and the world’s largest cigarette factory has banned most smoking in restaurants and bars, Republican Party members in Wisconsin apparently haven't been paying attention to the last 50 years of medical warnings about the dangers and costs of smoking. Take Republican State Senator Glenn Grothman's comments recently on Upfront with Mike Gousha (goo-Shay).
Democratic Rep. Jon Richards sanely brought up a few scientific facts and researched social costs relating to the harmful effects of smoking. Of course, Sen. Glenn Grothman would have none of it. Here are some Glenn gems:
"This isn't much of a public health problem, this is just a convenience problem...A lot of people out there don't smoke and they say "if I don't smoke, I don't want the guy next to me to smoke either."Right, that's what people are thinking. Oh, but it gets worse. We'll lose our "freedom"... to add to the rising cost of health care.
"Again it comes down to a matter of freedom. As people smoke less, the people that don't smoke seem to get madder and madder. Government continues to expand and it will expand to take one more freedom from us this year in the legislature."
Keep in mind, Republicans think health care costs can be brought down if people would just live healthier lifestyles. That wouldn't include inhaling less smoke would it?
Any tax exempt "charity " that has become a political action committee that, instead of doing research and educating, their primary function, now spends huge sums of money to hire lobbyists and lawyers to make laws using GESTAPO tactics using LAW ENFORCEMENT, THREATS, INTIMIDITATION, , and SNITCHING to FORCE people to OBEY their guidelines will get NO DONATIONS from me, Since becoming political action commitees, I wonder why the IRS doesn't get involved. Contributions to PACs are NOT tax deductable. All my donations are going to local events and groups that depend on local businesses and bingo halls, that the bans are affecting, for their support, Here are the groups taking that money away from them, all fed by big pharma through their Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "Thank you American Cancer Society. We never knew all you do".
ReplyDeletewww.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf
Good for you. Helping the little guy locally is really admirable. Those crazy health care lobbiests are just killing the small town Tavern League and the tobacco industry "little guys."
ReplyDeleteForcing smoking bans with threats of eventual death and ill health, demanding strong no smoking laws instead of weak exemption filled laws and their gestapo lobbying tactics are outragous.
Boy, if we just didn't have to put up with nurses, medical researchers, hospitals, lobbyists and lawyers promoting health care and healthy living, we could all be free to choose the way we live and die, even if we happen to take a few people in the same room with us.