Word: tobacco
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...Tobacco companies insist that nicotine, which is contained in varying amounts in all cigarettes, does not create a habit so powerful that it impairs a person's ability to quit. But the overwhelming consensus in the scientific community is that nicotine is an addictive substance. A Surgeon General's report has concluded it is as addictive as heroin or cocaine...
...Tobacco companies have heavier artillery when it comes to challenging the EPA's 1993 report that labeled environmental tobacco smoke, or ETS, a carcinogen. They charge that the report -- a review of 30 epidemiological, animal and laboratory studies conducted during the past two decades -- is fundamentally flawed. The Congressional Research Service and some independent scientists have also criticized the report...
Critics note, however, that the EPA didn't consider a threshold level for smoking damage. Scientists know cells have the ability to repair damage to their DNA. Can cells fix tobacco-induced changes, and at what level of pollution does the repair mechanism become overwhelmed? The agency regarded all smoke exposure as dangerous and the effects as cumulative. EPA scientists admit that the danger of getting a whiff of tobacco at the baseball stadium is generally not the same as driving in an enclosed car with a chain smoker. "I'd expect the ballpark risk to be minimal," concedes...
...disjuncture between law and practice may be extreme in France, but it is not unique. Around the world, legislators have followed the U.S. lead in trying to stub out tobacco by restricting smoking areas, banning or limiting cigarette ads, imposing steep taxes and issuing ominous health warnings. But with a few notable exceptions, such as in Singapore and Australia, cultural attitudes and habits have largely quashed such efforts. Foreigners, who seem only too eager to inhale most aspects of American culture, regard the U.S. obsession with smoking as overwrought. "The whole thing," sniffs German teacher Waltraud Gruneisl, "borders on mass...
...that impressionable youths learn by example, Singapore's military personnel are not permitted to smoke in public, and teachers in the United Arab Emirates are hounded by health officials to quit the habit outright. In India, which has the world's highest incidence of oral cancer (largely due to tobacco chewing and the popularity of smoking beedis, a rolled leaf filled with tobacco), the smoking characters in Hindi films and soap operas are almost always bad guys. Cigarette ads have been banned from television in most countries and from the print media in many. Even in South America, where antismoking...