How can this possibly be anyone but the smokers fault?

[R1Geezer]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8219473.st m I know it's the US but how long before it spreads thoughout the world? If this catches on presumably the Tobacco firms will find themselves out of business! The health effects are well known, packs carry ever more graphic warnings, yet idiots still do it, how can they have a legal leg to stand on when it causes premature death?
Blue Geezer Badges are available!

[blackietwo]

I'm a smoker, have been for a long time. Well before the packs carried warnings, and pictures. The days when they were sold to children, running to the corner shop for neighbours ect. I was addicted to cigs years before the health hazzards were fully known. People just thought they made you cough. Coming of cigs is not as easy as some people think, they are very addictive and have been compared to being more difficult to quit than heroin. The tobacco firms have known this for years, one company their name escapes me was in serious trouble years ago for adding something to make them more addictive.

[Cheeris]

Possibly it was because when she started smoking the US tobacco companies were using omnipresent and misleading advertising, and also all sorts of underhand and sometimes downright illegal tactics to get people to start smoking and carry on smoking, and therefore become addicted to a product with adverse health effects (which they are still doing in developing countries btw).

So, to answer your stupid question, no, it's not just down to the individual's choice to smoke.

[jake-the-peg]

If this catches on presumably the Tobacco firms will find themselves out of business!

And the down side of this is?

[mollykins]

isn't everyone going to try and sue the companies now?

[R1Geezer]

No down side jake, but the addicts will presumably grow there own and make there own cigs etc.

Anyway I just don't buy this, "started before it was known to be dangerous and now I'm hooked" sh1te. Yes it's tough but surely the health effects are compelling enough for a bit of effort to crack it? Ok there are lots of things we do that are less than healthy but when the quack says "give up or die" I'd say that's a strong incentive!

[R1Geezer]

its "their" x 2 in the first sentence, ok pedants!

[R1Geezer]

Cheeris,
"So, to answer your stupid question, no, it's not just down to the individual's choice to smoke."

Why is it a stupid question and when did the tobacco companies set up these forced smoking camps?

If it's not the individual's choice then who's is it?

You are plainly one of the sad hooked trying to defend your digusting habit! Tell me you don't want to give up if only you had the will!

[Sqad]

R1Geezer...beats me, the smoking population has known since 1966, the health hazards of smoking.

I think that in this case, the Company did not warn smokers by putting a warning on the packet. I think that the original sum was $18 billion, but that was reduced on appeal.

The smoker is dead, so she doesn't benefit, but the $18million goes to the surviving family.....can't work it out.

[Bobbisox]

For anyone who has never smoked, it is very easy to "knock" the smoker and take the moral high ground, I don't smoke now and haven't done for many years mainly because of the cost of a packet of 20!
There are also very graphic descriptives about drug use, pictures of young people in filthy surroundings, dead with injecting themselves, that hasn't helped the drug problem but has been shown to exasipate it.

[Sqad]

Joy.

I am not knocking them, I am knocking a judicial system that award $18 million dollars to the survivors.........whom incidentally I bet SMOKE.

[sp1814]

I say screw every penny out of the tobacco companies. PhilIp Morris and BAT are leading the push into 'emerging markets', by pushing fags to developing countries where they KNOW they levels of literacy are well below that if the West.

Africa and India have enough to contend with, without these drug peddlers (who are only one step away from being coke dealers), pushing their discounted weed on them.

By the way, I smoke, but I also do half marathons and run six miles a day (not whilst smoking, I may add). If I develop lung cancer, it's my own dumb fault.

[Bobbisox]

I was making a generalision sqad and not taking any one persons view.
I have to agree, why should the suvivors gain by this? I think I was trying to put forward, irrispective of warnings on packets, it isn't working, and being called an idiot for it, to me, is taking a moral stance, while I understand you RI for not liking the habit, giving up is very hard, I managed to do this by dieting at the same time, therefore directing me "habits" elsewhere, but it wasn't easy.

[B00]

"If this catches on presumably the Tobacco firms will find themselves out of business!

And the down side of this is?"

Your taxes will increase....

[sherminator]

I know I know I know (im so winning the award!!!)

But what about all the revenue that the government get from cigarettes!!!

[Bobbisox]

very good point BOO, Whilst those in Westminster push their virtues of the dreaded weed upon us by banning advertising and not allowing it on television, their bums must be nipping at just how much revenue is being taken away from their coffiers.
We had a locl, well loved comedian up her in the North-East called Bobby Thompson, when they advertise is DVD mainly at Christmas, his trade mark Woodbine has been replaced by a ,,,,crisp, ludicrous!!!

[R1Geezer]

Well done sherminator you get the first BGB for the double header of inaccurate and irrelevant! Well done!

[sherminator]

haha I dont agree with what i said! i just wanted the award!

what i find fascinating is people who just started smoking when there was no long term studies available into the illness' and now we have people taking illegal drugs and we dont know the long term effects of them! i wonder what we will know in say 10-15 years time?

[ludwig]

Am I reading it correctly - the first award was 28 BILLION??, reduced to 28 million, then to 13.8 million?

Where do these ridiculous figures come from?

[Sqad]

ludwig...correct.

[youngmafbog]

B*gger must sell my BAT shares.