Word: tobacco
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WASHINGTON: While tobacco is still a legal drug, it seems to be having a downright hallucenogenic effect on the Senate floor. The legislation that skated through John McCain's committee with a 19-2 vote is suddenly sparking furious debate -- and making Senators say some very strange things...
...tobacco crowd that leads the way in audacity. For years the industry denied liability for the almost 400,000 annual smoking-related deaths because everyone knew smoking could kill you--everyone, that is, but tobacco executives themselves! In 1996 they raised their nicotine-stained right hands before Congress and pleaded ignorance, a perjury charge Ken Starr could get his teeth into, if only he were not already representing these guys. When subpoenaed documents revealed an industry hell-bent on hooking kids, even tobacco's core congressional defenders blanched. Gingrich vowed he would be tougher than the President. The McCain bill...
Then there's the phony statistic that just a handful of smokers are teenagers. Sure, but only because 19-year-olds eventually turn 20. More than 90% of smokers begin as teenagers because even 20-year-olds are too mature to start up. Republicans are so addicted to tobacco money that they seem to be willing to risk kids' health and their majority in Congress for it. Gingrich's postelection book might be Lessons Learned the Really Hard...
...Tobacco. In the tobacco companies, Congress has found a group that is even more demonized than itself. In its zeal to capitalize on this unusual advantage, our elected representatives have proposed a harsher version of the deal struck last summer between the companies and numerous states to reduce teenage smoking. In response, the tobacco bosses have threatened to pull out of the negotiations with Congress and plead their case before the public. The O. J.-like contortions needed to convince us that these merchants of death are deserving of our sympathy will be so absurd that it'll be hard...
...What the man behind Joe Camel meant, perhaps, was discussions with American people who happen to be tobacco farmers. R.J. Reynolds and four other cigarette manufacturers held a closed-door meeting on the settlement Thursday with 120 growers from across the Southeast. Ordinary folk in the region haven't been forgotten: They've been saturated with TV commercials telling them why Senator McCain's tobacco bill is bad for the country. Since Goldstone and his counterparts saved a potential $500 billion by welshing on the deal, it seems they can afford to make such "discussions" a little one-sided...