American Madness.... This is choice A-#1 prime beef, or at least it was before we stuck it in a freezer truck and shipped it across the country for a week to your local super market........MmmMmm New-York steak !!!.............

What if Tobacco Advertisments told the truth ?

"Western" depicts a posse of teenagers pitching body bags onto the backs of horses with slurs that include, "Go on, be a cowboy!" as the horses gallop away; "Nightclub," goes interior to follow the exploits of one stiff that's dragged through the dance floor by his friends as slinky ladies caress the body bag; "Parachute," opens inside a DC-3 as adrenaline junkies pitch body bags attached to parachutes from the plane shouting, "Taste the adventure!" as they descend from the heavens; and "Beach," has the bags frolicking with hipster friends as they top up their tans. The spots work as sardonic stabs against the plethora of iconic imagery rendered in the tobacco advertising world --- images such as the immortal Marlboro Man riding the range with his cancer sticks, or the enticing Joe Camel whose rambunctious yet regal lifestyle suggests smoking is cool. As the percentage of American teen smokers continues to rise, the campaign aims to highlight such influential tobacco ads. (When the tobacco industry settled several state lawsuits in 1998, it agreed to fund the anti-tobacco American Legacy Foundation, devoting its energy to persuading teens not to smoke.)

So what happined with all that ??... Recently the Supreme court found the anti-tobbaco legislation unconstitutional !!!... So you see, tobacco companys have the constitutional right to advertise near highschools and places where teenagers gather in the mass ??.... They have the constitutional right to use (cool slogans, sex, characters, and the idea of fun/sucess/riches...) to sell an addictive substance to teenagers (who aren't even legally able to purchase the substance) an addictive substance I.E. once you get hooked it is a whole lot of hell if your "stuff" isn't around...This substance leads to DEATH !!! in a major way !!.......It's as much a nasty character as crack cocain , acept, it takes longer to kill !! so it's an affectively marketable substance because the average addict stays alive (and addicted) for about 40 years or so... A 40 year long regular customer is something nice to have !!, no other product can ever hope for such devout customer !.. But the Truth campaign is constitutional, yet, it is being deflated all the time ... How long has it been since you saw a truth commercial ?.. they are appearing less and less frequently ,,, why ??... could all this have something to do with our recent (republican president/ administration ?).. Please recall that Republicans are basically conservative rich capitolist whores ... and get a nice long look at this

Florida's innovative pilot program to stop teen smoking is in jeopardy of blowing away, but tobacco lobbyists say they aren't to blame.

The nation's cigarette makers pumped $425,000 into Florida political campaigns last fall, but they're not out to kill the "Truth" campaign, said John French, lobbyist for Philip Morris USA, the nation's largest cigarette maker.

Supporters, who say youth attitudes about smoking are changing, hope the Senate will allocate the $61.5 million recommended by Gov. Jeb Bush. The GOP-led Senate would set aside $30 million.

Lobbyists for the American Cancer Society, one of the campaign's strongest supporters, are at a loss to explain the loss of support on the House side.

The tobacco industry is a heavy contributor to political campaigns. The Florida Republican Party and its candidates received close to $300,000 from the industry for last year's campaigns. Democrats got another $125,000, state records show.

Money for the "Truth" campaign comes from the state's $13.2 billion legal settlement with cigarette makers, reached in 1997. The campaign has aired provocative anti-smoking TV ads, billboards and community programs.

A September survey by the campaign showed 59 percent of teens questioned agreed that "smoking has nothing to do with whether or not a person is cool." Six months earlier, 45 percent agreed with the statement. In addition, the survey found that 92 percent of respondents were aware of the Truth campaign and its ads.
!! ... hmmm it looks as though truth combined with anti-cigarrette adveritsment polocy was working ehhh ?.. (note that all this was from the clinton administration, but hey all the news told about him was how he got his pee-pee sucked !!!... which is far more important an issue than people being killed by capitolist whores selling addictive drugs in every major supermarket/gas station ect.. in the country !!! I wonder how they got so rich ?.. and can now afford to bury all that work ?.. The fact is, they know it is addictive and have known THAT IS WHY THEY SELL IT... But they also know that it kills THAT IS WHY THE SELL TO KIDS !!!! HOW CAN THE FDA CALL THIS A SAFE SUBSTANCE ?????????>........

Publicly the industry denied and continues to deny that it is clear that smoking causes lung cancer - yet it has understood the carcinogenic nature of its product since the 1950s. It is now clear that the industry’s stance on smoking and health is determined by lawyers and public relations concerns. So what exactly does this product do to people who use it ?.. We all know the answer to that (iron lungs, holes in the neck, sick raspy voices ,... all sorts of nasty stuff.......)

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Until recently the industry has denied its product is addictive. Most recently it has used a definition of addictiveness so broad that it encompasses shopping and the Internet. Internally, it has known since the 1960s that the crucial selling point of its product is the chemical dependence of its customers. Without nicotine addiction there would be no tobacco industry. Nicotine addiction destroys the industry’s PR and legal stance that smoking is a matter of choice

The companies deny that they target the young. The documents reveal the obvious - that the market of young smokers is of central importance to the industry. Many documents reveals the companies’ pre-occupation with teenagers and younger children - and the lengths they have gone to in order to influence smoking behaviour in this age group.

The industry maintains that advertising is used only to fight for brand share and that it does not increase total consumption - academic research shows otherwise. The documents show that advertising is crucial in nurturing the motivation to smoke by creating or projecting the positive values, such as independence, machismo, glamour or intelligence, erroneously associated with the product.

The documents show that the companies initially hoped to make safer cigarettes, but then abandoned the enterprise when it recognised that this would expose their existing products as `unsafe’. The industry has deliberately promoted ‘low-tar’ cigarettes knowing that they would offer false reassurance without health benefits. It has manipulated nicotine and introduced additives to change the delivery of nicotine. It recognises the cigarette as a drug delivery device.

The industry is challenged by passive smoking in two way. First, measures to protect non-smokers will reduce the opportunities to smoke and contribute to its social unacceptability. Second, the ‘freedom to smoke’ arguments are confounded if non-smokers are harmed. The industry has refused to accept the now overwhelming consensus regarding the harm caused by passive smoking - instead it has denied and obfuscated, and sought to influence debate by buying up scientists on a spectacular scale.

Faced with reducing levels of smoking in the West and an insatiable need for money, the companies have moved aggressively into developing countries and Eastern Europe. The documents reveal an arrogance and fanaticism that has imperialist echoes.

There is endless literature about it all over the internet,... If you are actually interested you can find enough to keep you reading for days !!... But my question is, why ?.. what is wrong with our country to keep letting people sell deadly addictive drugs in the open market ?... and I want to show that the real badguys are the republicans in office who are repealing all the anti-tobacco work which was done under the clinton administration (ar at least during).. and to realize that republicans do not concerne themselves with the public interest, only big money private interests... but they are christians aren't they ?........... Well christians who gave the top 4 million riches people a tax break that the other 200 million people in america will have to pay for..... but hey, I think the government should direct most of it's time toward a very small group of well to do people and let the rest of us fight in the streets for food ............ ROFL !!!... but what kind of civilization is this ?... It sure as hell isn't anything near a democracy to me, sure, we can all vote... but only on the things that the (guys up there) choose for us to vote on... not to mention not one of us who isn't in that class of the top 4-million can afford to advertise on (public) airwaves and tell people what we want them to know !!!...... after all, you only hear what someone wants you to hear .........................

Mike