ellakc2 Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 Hey did anyone see "Tobacco Files" host by Peter Jenkings on WPVI channel 6 in the Philadelphia, PA area. It was on Tuesday, Sept.8 Very interesting. It did cement may feeing that there will never be more research or a cure for Lung Cancer as long as Uncel Sam reeps the benefits Truely a sad thing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Remembering Dave Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 Yes, I did see it. It is amazing that the Bill submitted by Senator McCain got killed when it was so close and the Tobacco Co.'s were going along with it. It is also amazing that the eventual monetary settlements among the states has resulted in so little anti-smoking campaigns as promised by the governors of the states in the settlement, instead the states are treating it like a discretionary fund building golf courses etc, one state even used the funds to build a Tobacco Warehouse to house tobacco going to the cigarett factories?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Simply unbelievable. David C Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teresag Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 Find out how your state has allocatted its tobacco settlement funds at the Kaiser Family Foundation website http://www.kff.org/ . Very interesting and disconcerting. Fully 47% of these funds have gone to "Endowments and Reserves" or "other" causes. Less than 5% to tobacco prevention efforts. This is shameful. Sorry about the long URL: http://www.statehealthfacts.org/cgi-bin ... tive+Total You can also go to http://www.statehealthfacts.org/ and search for "tobacco" to get a list of the relevant kff sites. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donna G Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 I was to court here in Minnesota re tobacco money. Even the money allocated is questionable what good it did. MPPAT the organization who was given the money spent the money on themselves, Some one in the room would step out and they would vote him money, then another. So far I believe they have made smoke free restaurants in a couple of towns with there efforts. Because of our court efforts they were forced to spend some of the money on smoking cessation also. I see on those sites some sad statistics for Minnesota 2003 2300 of the 9100 Cancer deaths in the state were lung cancer. 2000 1518 men got lung cancer and 1175 women T=2693 2194 died. If you look closer you see more died in 2003 than 2000 Donna G Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Elaine Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 The humor columnist Dave Barry has this to say about the tobacco settlement, and it appears he was right on! Tobacco Ruling A Smoking Gun by Dave Barry Miami Herald Q. Could you please explain the recent historic tobacco settlement? A. Sure. Basically, the tobacco industry has admitted that it is killing people by the millions and has agreed that, from now on, it will do this under the strict supervision of the federal government. Q. Will there be monetary damages assessed? A. Yes. To compensate for the immense suffering caused by its products, the tobacco industry will pay huge sums of money to the group most directly affected. Q. Lawyers? A. Yes. Q. Will the federal government also receive large quantities of money? A. Of course. Q. How will the tobacco industry obtain this money? A. By selling more tobacco products. Q. What if consumers stop buying tobacco products? A. That would be very bad. That would mess up the economics of the whole thing. The government would probably have to set up an emergency task force to figure out ways to get people smoking again in order to finance the historic tobacco settlement. Q. Under this settlement, will potent new steps be taken to remind smokers that they should not smoke? A. Yes. Cigarette packs will carry even sterner scientific warnings regarding the badness of smoking, such as "YOU BIG DOODYHEAD!" These warnings will no doubt have the same massive impact as all the previous warnings, causing many smokers to smack their foreheads and say, "I had NO IDEA that smoking was unhealthy. I shall quit immediately!" Q. Seriously, is there some kind of printed warning that really would make people stop buying cigarettes? A. Yes. Sales would drop to zero overnight if the warning said, "CIGARETTES CONTAIN FAT." American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it. Q. If the government really wants people to stop smoking, how come it doesn't just make cigarettes illegal? A. Because people would smoke them anyway. Q. Then how come the government makes crack cocaine illegal? A. That is an unfair comparison. The tobacco industry is merely selling a deadly product; the crack cocaine industry is guilty of something far worse. Q. Failure to make large political donations? A. Yes. Q. What does the historic tobacco settlement do to discourage adolescents from smoking? A. It requires the parents of adolescents to put on giant pants, shave their heads and get their noses pierced, then smoke cigarettes in front of their kids while making such statements as, "Smoking is cool, dude!" This will cause adolescents to join strict religious orders. This was written at the time of the original settlement, before it got watered down!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowflake Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 HEY! THIS is an idea! Q. Seriously, is there some kind of printed warning that really would make people stop buying cigarettes? A. Yes. Sales would drop to zero overnight if the warning said, "CIGARETTES CONTAIN FAT." American consumers have no problem with carcinogens, but they will not purchase any product, including floor wax, that has fat in it. Think they could set up a task force on how tobacco makes a body absorb fat?? (Hmmm...that would probably backfire...lots of people gain weight when they quit smoking...) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donna G Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 What Minnesota’s Tobacco Settlement Achieved Ø $6.1 billion settlement – four and one-half times the $1.7 billion the state had sought for extra costs state programs had paid to treat sick smokers. Most of the settlement money is a sanction against the tobacco industry for what it did to addict kids and mislead the public. Ø Permanent ban on tobacco marketing that targets children, enforceable with money penalties, injunctions and fines. Ø $202 million fund (3 percent of settlement) to help adults quit smoking and conduct research (called the Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco). Ø Over 33 million pages of secret industry documents opened to the public, including the industry-funded Minnesota Document Depository for public use. Ø The settlement proposed a permanent endowment to reduce youth smoking through counter-advertising, classroom education, community partnerships, advocacy, research and evaluation in a comprehensive program to reduce tobacco use in Minnesota. State Legislators fulfilled that promise in 1999 when they established the Tobacco Prevention Endowment with 8 percent of the state’s $6.1 billion settlement. Sadly, during the 2003 legislative session Governor Pawlenty and lawmakers chose to completely eliminated the tobacco endowments to fix the budget deficit. As a result, not one penny of Minnesota’s historic tobacco settlement is being used to prevent kids from smoking. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snowflake Posted September 10, 2004 Share Posted September 10, 2004 Donna, 8% of $6.1 billion is: $488,000! Outrageous! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellakc2 Posted September 10, 2004 Author Share Posted September 10, 2004 Thanks guys for the data. I was a dumb kid I started smoking at 12 and was smoking every day by 15. One thing good that has come out of my cancer is that my 4 and 5 yr. old grandchildren saw what happened to me. We didn't tell them to much (I didn't want them to be afraid) but I did tell them grammy was so sick from cigarettes. At the time of illness they were 3&4. Now being a yr. older they ask questions. Joseph the 4 yr. old told me his mommy had the cancer talk w/ him. He actually was very funny w/ the facial expressions asking me questions. But god willing they will never smoke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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