[jordyn]

Not only do they educate people on alcohol usage they allow them to make their own tobacco choices!

In a country that allows people to get drunk enough to die, drive and abuse prescription pills, with all the other problems plaguing our families they don't care about, it seems the biggest threat to the states is cigarettes with flavor.  I can get any flavor alchol, any nasty flavored cigar and a variety of other tobacco(cigars, pipe, chew) products with a range of strengths, flavors and an even larger capacity to kill, cause cancer and other health risks, three times the size of a cigarette, but not slim cigarettes that taste like dessert and have a pretty pink filter?

They allow people to eat all the unhealthy junk food while allowing companies to slide by with a nutrition label, i thought obesity was the largest killer in america but people can by junk food, energy drinks and other bad for you items, using money the government gives them for food...i suppose it's just more governmental hypcracy. 

sort of like the leading death on the highways is drunk drivers, however people chilling at home with some herb are the dangerous criminals!!!!

Maybe i'll just by expensive liquor, cheap cigarettes to soak in the liquor and when they dry smoke the delightfullly flavored poison, get drunk, kill someone...i'll get a slap on the wrist, one strike out of ten(i know people who have ten or more duis and still drive)but i can't smoke a dessert cigarette?

is there anything good about america anymore?  Our freedoms suck, we're becoming a big brother state, the good jobs are shipped outside to countries that can't speak english and they're "good for you/bad for you" items are whacked out and unreasonable!!!!

Menthol crystalizes your lungs, but people can still smoke them?

i hope in december the world does go to hell in a hand basket, then i can grow my own tobacco in a nice mountain greenhouse, flavor it and not worry about the government telling me i can eat all the unhealthy junkfood i want until my arteries are so clogged they can't pump blood through a massive three hundred pound frame, drink until my liver and kidneys rot, wash it down with energy drinks that knock the body out of whack, pop pills until i'm a vegetable that feels nothing, and as long as i stay away from dessert cigarettes, don't pay for sex and avoid a relaxant i can grow in My own garden, i'm the perfect american!

Yeah...i'm irritated by it...a sucky job i'm taxed out of the ass for, by a government who tells me i can't enjoy my vices having to settle for those they approve of, doesn't help my state of mind right now either...damn, the more i get into this post, the more i'm looking forward to an end to the current state of the world and getting back to simplier times when americans could choose for themselves without such hypocritical rules pertaining to vice and luxury.

I've been running into a lot fo nice canadians lately, they're country is doing pretty good and an european feel.

http://www.fda.gov/TobaccoProducts/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/ucm182186.htm

http://apps.cbp.gov/csms/viewmssg.asp?Recid=17702&page=3&srch_argv=&srchtype=&btype=&sortby=&sby=

but not slim cigarettes that taste like dessert and have a pretty pink filter?

Perhaps you'd like them to come in packets decorated with My Little Pony, or free samples given out with Elle Girl magazine, too?

Here's a simple fact: adults don't start smoking. Kids do.

If you want to taste vanilla or dessert or peaches or whatever, then eat those things. 'Cos nobody smokes for the taste. They smoke because they are addicted to nicotine.

And flavoured cigarettes are just one more cynical ploy by Big Tobacco to get kids hooked on nicotine.

In the UK, smoking kills 120,000 of Big Tobacco's customers every year. That's 120,000 kids they need to get addicted every year just to keep profits equal. And we all know that they want to increase profits, not maintain a status quo. Hence chocolate and candy and vanilla and banana flavoured cigarettes.

If you're unhappy that your cigarettes taste of what they actually are - tar, benzene, ammonia, formaldehyde, nicotine, arsenic and hydrogen cyanide - then QUIT.

[jordyn]

flavored or not, kids will still smoke...where they get the money from?  I card kids that have been eighteen for a little under a month all the time. Not to mention the serious fine, even possible firing if you are the one caught selling to a minor.  Going that route why not ban alchol unless it contains dry gin?  Underage drinking is a serious issue, especially in smaller towns where no one has anything to do to drink, and if you're a kid that can't get into the bars there's thousands of acres of woods to party in. 

Banning something silly like a flavor won't stop people from doing what they want to do, and telling adults who are aware of the health risks you can smoke this but don't smoke that because kids will enjoy the flavor too, doesn't really make sense.  Have you seen the overwhelming amount of tobacco products out there? Most of the younger smokers buy the cigarettes on sale, why not ban coupons on tobacco products and sell them in white or black packages with plain type stating if they're a blue, pink, purple, gold silver, orange, red, short, long, slim, a 100, filtered or non filtered, low end, high end...canada sells them for almost ten dollars a pack.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hc-ps/tobac-tabac/research-recherche/stat/ctums-esutc_2010_graph-eng.php

they're still smoking, the higher prices seem to have affected their general smoking population...i'm all for raising the prices, but i can afford ten dollars for a pack, i was paying almost nine for some nice belgium cigarettes that had no adds in america.

A note on the picture...my daughter detests smoking by her own choice, but already demonstrates an interest in drinking. Posting a drunk  youth passed out picture would show a more serious issue, in my opinion. What's the difference between liquor and tobacco?

*and on a personal note, blended flavoring tastes better than tasty drops...the flavor is not an issue, the convenience similiar to a nice chocolate rasberry dessert wine rather than several bottles of flavored liquor to mix cocktails, what'll get me more drunk when all i want is a sweet treat and the convenience store doesn't sell any proper cigars?

.

flavored or not, kids will still smoke

And homicide laws or not, people will still murder other people. So why not make murder legal?

The error of logic that you commit here is known as the Perfect Solution Fallacy. You argue that because banning flavoured tobacco will not completely eliminate child/teen smoking, we should abandon any attempt at legislation completely. This fails to take into account that it is not intended to be perfect and that the aim is to deter or prevent some children/teens from taking up smoking. Reasonable minded people would agree that on balance this is a good thing.

where they get the money from?

That's a red herring, completely irrelevant to whether or not tobacco is flavoured. But seeing how you've raised it anyway, here's the answer. Smoking is an addiction, just like heroin or crystal meth or crack, and ADDICTS ALWAYS FIND A WAY TO GET THEIR DRUG. Beg, borrow or steal, once they're hooked it is immaterial.

Going that route why not ban alchol unless it contains dry gin? Underage drinking is a serious issue, especially in smaller towns where no one has anything to do to drink, and if you're a kid that can't get into the bars there's thousands of acres of woods to party in.

Alcohol is the number one youth drug problem in North America. Alcohol - not marijuana, not cocaine, not heroin, not ecstasy, not ice - is the leading drug killer among young people in America. Alcohol kills more than six times as many teenagers as all illicit drugs combined and is a major factor in the four leading causes of teen deaths - car crashes, unintentional injuries, homicides, and suicides. According to estimates developed for the U.S. Department of Justice, underage drinking costs the nation $53 billion each year. But once again, you're "solution" to the problem is to say, "Most kids are still gonna drink, so what the hell. Party on!" Instead of demanding that society works collectively to pursue opportunities to reduce the availability of alcohol to underage drinkers, the occasions for underage drinking, the aggressive marketing of alcopops to teens and the demand for alcohol among young people, maybe you think they should concentrating on developing a new and improved cookie-dough flavour malt liquor? 'Cos "responsible adults" like sweetie-booze too.

Banning something silly like a flavor won't stop people from doing what they want to do, and telling adults who are aware of the health risks you can smoke this but don't smoke that because kids will enjoy the flavor too, doesn't really make sense.

Banning flavoured tobacco won't prevent nicotine addicts from smoking, no. But it will reduce the number of teens who take up smoking and then become addicts. What "doesn't really make sense" is basing public health policy on the views of adults who are aware of the health risks and yet continue to smoke because they are addicted to nicotine. Hey, let's go ask the crystal meth users whether they'd like to see their ice made available in the 7-Eleven. Strictly for over 21's, though. In plain packaging, no fancy flavours.

A note on the picture...my daughter detests smoking by her own choice, but already demonstrates an interest in drinking.

Gee, you don't say? That's because the alcohol industry is aggressively marketing alcopops to teen girls. A 2006 AMA study indicated a third of all girls older than 12 have tried alcopops. Sixty percent of teen girls who have seen alcopops ads have tried them. These  "starter brews" are aimed solely at "entry-level drinkers" and teen girls who don't much like the taste of alcohol and act as a bridge between soft drinks and a drinking lifestyle.



Drinking at an early age also increases the risk of alcohol dependence and illicit drug use later in life. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a young person who starts to drink before age 15 is four times more likely to become alcohol dependent than someone who begins at age 21. Just like Big Tobacco with their candy-flavoured cigarettes, those same young people represent the booze industry's future best customers and the companies' best prospects for substantial future profits.

So it's hardly surprising that your teen "already demonstrates an interest in drinking."

What is surprising is that you are blinded by the slick, guerilla marketing ("Hey! Big government and the democrats want to take away our freedom as God-fearin', gun-totin' citizens to choose what flavor tabacky we can smoke!")  and can't see your complicity in handing our kids over to alcohol and nicotine producers.


On a lighter note:

[jordyn]

The difference between murder and proper adult entertainment is that if it's proper it's not violating the rights of another person to live their life, saying what adults can choose to do that's not harming another is sort of redundant. I'm not against the ban on smoking in public places and quite happy smoking outside, you meet the most amazing people and we're pleasanlty killing ourselves, not each other.  However we are adults that demonstrate we can handle our vices, children fail to have the maturity to understand right from wrong, problem from social celebration.

I don't blame any particular party, and rather proud that my state's considered a maverick state...but the far west is not like most of america that have people so bored with their lives they have to insist others live that way to, and in the northwest we're even more personal liberty based.  The government for all the awful things it's responsible for ultimately are doing it for the majority of the people in the united states willing to spend their time and money shaping the world how they believe it should be rather than allowing individuals that demonstrate a mature ability to live in their society the freedom to do with their lives and bodies as they wish.

I'm over twenty one, work a job, raise a child and one class away from a degree.  I live in my own place, paying my own bills while paying max taxes, why shouldn't i be able to go online, go to an european site and order me a carton of chocolate cherry cigarettes, paying proper tax to the state?  I sure as heck ain't gonna be selling them to any minor, i'm already having to hide my liquors from mine and as a legal authorized seller in the state of montana of liquor and tobacco, i know the rules, issues and still think my rights, aren't right.

[jordyn]

reason two...they're socialist not a splintered continent rife with opposing political viewpoints, states fighting for funding from the federal government and the political officials can be a shady as any shadow...how many political parties are there now?

 the tea party is the most recent, that one's particularly interesting with it's colonial american associations.