The New Liars, The Smoking Industry's New Protégé

When I was a kid, in the '50s, we all knew that smokers coughed. We knew what coughing was. It was the body's attempt to expel something that wasn't good for it. Simple really, isn't it? Nope. Smoking was "a part of natural good health"; so said a study by the tobacco industry when I was 6. Even at 6, we kids knew this was a lie. We didn't know why they were lying, but we knew they were. We wanted to smoke; the ads convinced us ("Winston tastes good-").

As I grew older, I looked forward to the legal age of smoking and happily disregarded medical studies, pictures of diseased lungs, the eventual Surgeon Generals' warnings and, not least, Yogi Bear's bouncing head, to puff away.

Now, finally, we learn in millions of documents that truly evil businessmen willfully and deliberately lied to us. They had proof smoking was addictive. They had proof that smoking killed. They had evidence that the additives in cigarettes were more addictive than heroin. They made money off of people's ill health, cancer, and emphysema. What no one publically quantified was the number of non-smokers they also killed; people who died because our taxpayers' resources were being eaten up in anti-smoking advertising, rising Medicaid costs and a loss of productivity in the workplace from sick and dying smokers.

Some of these funds could have gone to alleviate poverty and infant deaths. One estimate is that this hidden cost, in lives, exceeds one million children per year worldwide. It is not the smokers' fault, they were actively, knowingly marketed death sticks; death to more than just them.

Now we see history repeating itself. Some of the same lobbying firms in Washington have turned from the tobacco industry to the video gaming industry. The spin is on.