The British medical Association is all for supporting anything that drives the point home.
Come June 2007, all cigarette packs sold in India will show graphic pictures of a corpse and mouth cancers will be displayed on the packs. Poignant pictures of a toddler with tubes in his nostrils will be part of some packs, designed to fill the smoker with dread regarding the potential fallout of smoking on innocent children. Tobacco products will also display the skull and crossbones picture on the packaging along with messages like "Tobacco causes a slow and painful death".
Today, It is estimated that above 2,500 Indians die every day due to diseases related to the consumption of tobacco products. Hopefully the gruesome display of graphics will serve as a deterrent.
Despite these measures, tobacco companies, are now in negotiations over the percentage of the surface of the cigarette pack that must display the graphics. Grown men squabbling over making money out of something already proven to be a massive body pollutant.
Profits increase and decrease on a continuous scale . The health status of a person who has been a loyal consumer of these death sticks, only slides lower on a continuous scale.
As if this was no enough, the New York Times on December 1, 2006, reported: "The [tobacco] industry has been aware at least since the 1960s that cigarettes contain significant levels of polonium. Exactly how it gets into tobacco is not entirely understood, but uranium “daughter products” naturally present in soils seem to be selectively absorbed by the tobacco plant, where they decay into radioactive polonium. High-phosphate fertilizers may worsen the problem, since uranium tends to associate with phosphates..."
And you want to know why cancer cases are increasing all over the world ?
A look at the Wikipedia entry on "smoking" indicates a remark at the top of the page saying that this is a biased article, and someone has taken objection to it !
All educated people, none of them blind, all having exposure to quick information access, and still, inexplicably, this little weed of a plant has these loyal folks who defend it, warts and all .
James the first who ruled Britain in the 1600's had the right idea when he wrote a piece called "A Counter Blast to tobacco", and he said : "A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
Then, he nationalized the tobacco industry and reduced taxes.
Now you know what rulers learn from each other, irrespective of which century they exist in.
