It can be easily documented that nicotine, a nerve poison, is three time more toxic than arsenic. Any toxicology reference book* in any public library will confirm this fact. For years it was the only active ingredient in Ortho Gardening Products' insecticide. Yet, the non- addicted public does not know what nicotine is. The purveyors of this poison spend millions to portray it as an inert ingredient the use of which is in the same category as eating too much red meat or not getting enough exercise.
One of the industry's many strategies is to create a "constitutional right to chose" to smoke thereby lulling the non-addicted public into believing that adults have a right to exercise their free will and use nicotine products if they so choose. However the industry cannot produce one full informed adult who chose to become addicted to their product. Webster defines addiction as "a compulsive physiological need". By definition addiction takes away one's freedom of choice. The "right to chose" which the industry promotes is in fact the right they have already taken away.
Our usual watch-dogs have become industry lap-dogs as the industry continues to spend millions advertising in the media, paying big speaking fees to reporters and making huge political contributions. There is a reason the media never really reports on the untold suffering endured by millions of addicts each day or the thousand that die each day. They did not knowingly choose to suffer and die this way! Like the victims of abortion, the addicted and the dead don't complain.
Remember, at the turn of the century you could by cocaine and other drugs out of mail order catalogs. Tobacco had a deadlier product but a better lobby. Do not confuse legality with morality. Slavery was legal. Hitler said the camps were legal.
My fellow attorneys you are the public's last resort - since when is poisoning someone not an actionable tort? Is not addicting a minor to a toxic drug actionable by itself? What good is a warning to an addict? What happened to the "reasonable man"? The other shoe will only fall when the non-addicted public, especially jurors, view nicotine in a light no more favorable than they now view arsenic. Ken Allen, Attorney, Columbia, SC longdistance@city-online.com
* Poisoning, Toxicology, Symptoms, Treatments, by Dr. Jay M. Arena,
B.S., M.D. 3rd Edition (pp. 84 & 85) =====================================
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