[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by vesperae
on June 13, 2009, 3:05 am, in reply to "Re: So what is it....a drug or a medical device?"
Yeah, the whole thing seems profoundly bizarre to me. While it is persuasive to me to argue that nicotine is addictive, and therefore smoking should be considered a drug, it is such an utterly incomplete understanding of why smoking is attractive, and no understanding at all of why people continue to want to start smoking, looooong before nicotine cravings even begin to set in.
Smoking is so far qualitatively removed from food, and frankly, from just about every other mood altering drug known to pharmacology, because it is deeply experience-based, and there is no other manner of pleasuring the flesh and the mind that is even remotely similar. Except maybe for sex.
But on a totally mundane level, how on earth can government possibly afford to mess with "the golden goose" that is tax revenues from cigarettes?
And if the FDA or any government agency suddenly mandated that nicotine could no longer be sold in cigarettes, there would quickly be mass social upheaval.
I did hear mention of the likelihood that the FDA would implement the same large, graphic warning labels featured elsewhere in the world on packs of cigarettes sold in the U.S.
The whole thing is a bit of a puzzlement to me...
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