[ Post a Response | The Sublime Desire of Cigarette Smoking ]
Posted by vesperae
on June 13, 2009, 9:35 pm, in reply to "Re: So what is it....a drug or a medical device?"
"What they will do is slap the tobacco companies with so many regulations that they will suffer poor sales."
But they can't do that, or they will reduce the massive funding that sale tax revenues from cigarettes provide to government.
"Then they will allow new formulations to be concocted and trialed by the FDA who will then later approve them."
But here's the thing - it seems highly unlikely to me that this will ever happen. They'll never have the time or resources to devote to the project, and because of the tax revenues issue, they won't start implementing random changes until they do massive amounts of research to attempt harm reduction for a product that is by definition, ALWAYS harmful.
Asking the FDA to regulate cigarettes is like asking a mechanic to fix your car with only a box of paintbrushes for tools. It simply isn't equipped, and will probably never be equipped, to do the job.
So it won't ever get done...?
Maybe I'm wrong, but beyond the headlines, it seems hard to believe that this is little more than a paper tiger. Again, I have to believe that government will never give up its addiction to sin taxes, and to the vast amounts of money that cigarettes especially generate.
My $0.02 of hunch,
V
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