Update: The house approved the insanity. May be blocked in the Senate.

The House scheduled a vote for Thursday morning on the legislation, which gives the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate -- but not ban -- cigarettes and other tobacco products.

Comment:

The power to regulate is the power to ban just as the power to tax is the power to destroy.

"We have come to what I hope will be an historic occasion, and that is finally doing something about the harm that tobacco does to thousands and thousands of Americans who die each year," Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said Wednesday as lawmakers debated his Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

Comment:

We are all born and we all die. The notion that restricting smokes will reduce disease and increase life span is based on pop science that does not address certain realities. One person may smoke and develop various illnesses that can be attributed to lifestyle. Another person can live a lifestyle that would suggest an early death and they will end up 100 years old and sneaking smokes in the boys room of the nursing home.

Regardless, utopianist who want to take control of our lives and lock people up who do not conform to that control suck donkey ass. Smoking should be left a personal choice.

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Members of Congress who votes to allow the government greater power to regulate tobacco are evil!!!

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At a certain point I encouraged my mother to stop smoking because she had developed heart disease. When she stopped smoking that made her eating habits and her juvenile diabetes worse. (Note: Contrary to pop science lies on diabetes, my mom was always skinny.) But when she stopped smoking diabetes began taking a greater, speedier, toll on her body.

I do not believe for a second that she denying herself something she truly enjoyed added one day to her life. And I will always regret taking the doctor's side. Like all anti-smoking advocates I was fucking retarded.