The Tobacco Conspiracy

Whenever people say large scale conspiracies are impossible, I point to the tobacco industry:

CDC: Teens now favor pot over cigarettes

Well, at least they'll live longer...-jef
 

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By Stephen C. Webster - RAW Story
Friday, June 8, 2012

 

 

A study released Friday (PDF) by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that in 2011, for the first time ever, more American teens were smoking marijuana than cigarettes.

The CDC’s annual Youth Risk Behavior Survey tracks drug abuse, among other potential destructive behaviors, by surveying high school students across the country. The agency said it collected data from more than 15,000 surveys taken in 43 states and 21 large urban school districts.

The result: Marijuana is officially more popular than cigarettes among U.S. teens, for the first time ever. A full 23 percent of students surveyed told the CDC they had used marijuana within the last month, whereas just 18 percent said they had smoked cigarettes.

The findings are consistent with a Raw Story analysis of the 2011 Partnership for a Drug-Free America report on teen drug abuse, which found that marijuana’s popularity has exploded since 2008. By comparing the Partnership’s data to prior CDC studies, Raw Story concluded that marijuana use had finally exceeded cigarette smoking among U.S. teens, which the CDC has now confirmed directly.

The Partnership’s report noted that almost half of American teens (47 percent) said they have used marijuana at least once, representing a 21 percent increase over their 2008 study. The CDC, on the other hand, noted in 2009 that 30 percent of high school students reported having experimented with cigarette smoking at least once, down from 39 percent in 2000, while about 24 percent had used a tobacco product (including chewing tobacco) recently, down from 34.5 percent.

There are several possible ways to contextualize the swing among American teens from cigarettes to marijuana, but one sticks out above all the rest: the economic recession.

Researchers at the University of New Hampshire reported in 2010 that they had debunked the “gateway drug” theory through scientific analysis of assorted risk factors that contribute to the desire to abuse more destructive drugs like heroin or prescription pills. Instead of early experiences with marijuana weighing significantly on that decision, researchers found that other stress factors like unemployment weigh much more in determining a teen’s likelihood to become addicted to harder, potentially lethal drugs.

“Employment in young adulthood can protect people by ‘closing’ the marijuana gateway, so over-criminalizing youth marijuana use might create more serious problems if it interferes with later employment opportunities,” one of the study’s authors said in a press release.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in April that teen unemployement was hovering around 25 percent, down from 27 percent in 2009 — its highest rate since the Great Depression, and roughly 10 percent higher than the teen unemployment rate in the years leading up to the near economic collapse of 2008.

Added: Since no such regulatory framework exists for marijuana, and since drug dealers do not tend to check IDs, most youths told the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse in 2009 (PDF) that pot is easier to purchase than regulated substances.

The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has consistently raised issue with “youth-penalty laws” (PDF) that punish kids for using tobacco, saying the laws are favored by tobacco companies because they oppose the truly effective means of control, like public education, restrictions on marketing and increased retail prices. By agreeing to penalize the end user, the Campaign claims that lawmakers ultimately just “divert the police from their efforts to stop retailers from illegally selling tobacco products to kids,” which results in breeding “disrespect for the law” among young people.

The Drug Policy Alliance, America’s leading drug policy reform group, says something startlingly similar about marijuana.

“It’s time to step back and ask ourselves what’s the best way to solve the problem we’re trying to solve—how to reduce drug abuse and addiction—and use the best available evidence to guide us,” Jag Davies, publications manager for The Drug Policy Alliance, said in a recent advisory. “And, ultimately, it’s time to bring marijuana out of the shadows and under the rule of law. The evidence shows that the most effective way to reduce teen marijuana use would be to regulate it in a manner similar to alcohol, with age limits, licensing controls, and other regulatory restrictions.”

Some wars are just not ever meant to be won...

There's only money in it if it lasts and lasts.

That's how they fill privatized prisons with non-violent offenders...make that money!

And banks like Wells Fargo can launder money for drug cartels...make that money!

It's how the CIA is able to fund the covert shit we'll never know about...make that money!

It's why illegal drugs--which kill fewer people per year than even FOOD does--will never be legalized--not even marijuana, even though it is actually beneficial to your health: it prevents/treats cancer by shrinking tumors (Google it...or look down the right side of this blog in the word collage and click on "cannabis" for a list of several articles from legitimate medical authorities touting all the medical benefits of cannabis), it's a very potent anti-oxidant, it relieves pain, nausea, treats glaucoma, eases chemotherapy symptoms. 


Legal drugs like alcohol (75,000 US deaths, 2.5 million world wide deaths each year) and tobacco ( 443,000 US deaths, 6 million world wide deaths per year) and prescription drugs (100,000 to 200,000 US deaths per year) will continue to remain legal and earn their "pushers" billions of dollars. Medical malpractice (which includes incorrectly prescribing drugs) kills 1,000,000 people per year in the US and the food we eat kills: 30,000 people from obesity each year; 72,000 from diabetes each year; 600,000 from heart disease each year. The total number from those evil illegal drugs on which we wage war is 17,000 US deaths each year. And the number of deaths per year attributed to marijuana has been 0 for half a century. 


Is this war on drugs--which itself costs law enforcement billions of dollars and the US and Mexico over 1 million deaths per year--really in our best interests? As with every tragic criminal endeavor, if you follow the money, you will reveal what really motivates such a purposefully futile endeavor as the drug war fail. The failure of prohibition has destroyed hundreds of millions of more lives than it has or will ever save. 


The US political system has been broken for over a century. Our once democratic republic is nothing more than a fascist oligarchy in which the aristocracy (top 1%) chooses its own members--none of whom have any capability to govern--from whom we think we pick those who pretend to represent our (the 99%) interests, when the only interests they preserve are their own. The robber barons are more devious and stronger and richer than ever, and impose upon us a fake morality based on nothing and tell us that in the land of the free, we are not free to make our own decisions regarding our health and well-being, so that when we get caught stepping out of their arbitrarily drawn lines, we'll end up in their privatized prison system, where we lose what remained of our constitutional rights but still remain a source of profit for them.


Corruption reigns supreme in every single layer/level of government, from local school boards and neighborhood associations to the judicial, legislative and executive branches of government. It's disgusting and pitiful. And we the people are now inmates in a police state, subject to: indefinite detention without a trial; surrender of assets and property; torture; and execution if we wind up on the radar of the US Gestapo--the FBI, DHS, NSA, TSA, DEA and any other "acronymed" branch of the military enforcing the sinister will of the police state.

Mortality Rates per Year - Substance Abuse

Tobacco

443,000 deaths/yr
46.6 million users

1 of every 100.6 users

Alcohol

85,000 deaths/yr
162.6 million users

1 of every 3240 users

Pharmaceutical Drugs

correctly prescribed and administered

100,000 deaths/yr
202 million users

1 of every 2020 users

misused/abused/not prescribed

32,000 deaths/yr
48 million  users

1 of every 825 users

Illegal drugs

17,000 deaths/yr
20.4 million users 

1 of every 1200 users

Poor Diet and Physical Inactivity:

365,000 deaths/yr
311 million users

1 of every 852 users

Will Cigarettes Be Made Illegal in the Near Future?

(The two most dangerous drugs which factor into the most health problems and result in the most deaths, BY FAR, are both legal: alcohol and tobacco kill half a million people per year. Did I mention both are legal?--jef)

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The battle over cigarettes is heating up -- and the momentum to criminalize tobacco smoking continues to build in the United States and around the world. 

By Tony Newman, AlterNet on January 20, 2011

Will cigarettes be illegal in the future? The battle over cigarettes is heating up - and recent news shows that momentum to criminalize tobacco smoking continues to build in the United States and around the world.

Last week the New York Times reported on the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan's war on cigarette smokers. Back in 2005 Bhutan banned the sale of tobacco but made little headway as smugglers brought in cigarettes from India. Now the country is enforcing the ban by allowing authorities to break down doors looking for illegal cigarettes. People who sell illegal cigarettes are now facing five year sentences. Breaking down doors and long sentences over the tobacco plant! Sounds familiar? If it does, it's because that's how the U.S. deals with the marijuana and coca plants.

And the creeping criminalization of tobacco is not only happening in far away places, but right here in the "Land of the Free."

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that the FDA is looking into banning menthol cigarettes. The argument by some antismoking groups is that menthol cigarettes are enticing to adolescent smokers and have been marketed to the African American community. A ban on menthols would build on the FDA's ban last year on flavored cigarettes and cloves.

While I support many restrictions on public smoking, such as at restaurants and workplaces, and I appreciate public education campaigns and efforts aimed at discouraging young people from smoking, I believe the prohibition of menthols would inevitably lead to harmful and unintended consequences.

For millions of people, menthols are their smoke of choice. I have no doubt that someone is going to step in to meet this demand. What do we propose doing to the people who are caught selling illegal menthol cigarettes? Are cops going to have to expend limited resources to enforce this ban? Are we going to arrest and lock up people who are selling the illegal cigarettes? Prisons are already bursting at the seams (thanks to drug laws) across the country. Are we going to waste more taxpayer money on criminalization and incarceration?

The prohibition of flavored cigarettes also moves us another step closer to total cigarette prohibition. Last year it was cloves. This year it may be menthol. And why not all cigarettes next year? Cigarettes kill; 400,000 people die prematurely every year from smoking. When we analyze the harm from drugs, there is no doubt that cigarettes are the worst. Considering how harshly we deal with less harmful drugs like marijuana, by that same flawed logic cigarettes should be illegal too.

But with all the good intentions in the world, outlawing cigarettes would be just as disastrous as the prohibition of other drugs. After all, people would still smoke, just as they still use other drugs that are prohibited, from marijuana to cocaine. But now, in addition to the harm of smoking, there would be a whole range of "collateral consequences," such as black market-related violence, that crop up with prohibition.

Remember, banning marijuana and coca plants have led to 35,000 deaths in Mexico due to prohibition over just the past four years. Imagine what banning the tobacco plant would do. We would have a black market, with outlaws taking the place of delis and supermarkets, stepping in to meet the demand and provide the desired drug.

Instead of buying your cigarettes in a legally sanctioned place, you would have to hit the streets to pick up your fix. The cigarette trade would provide big revenue to "drug dealers," just as illegal drugs do today. There would be shootouts in the streets and killings over the right to sell the illicit substance.

We need to realize that drugs that already have an established demand, whether cigarettes or marijuana or alcohol, will always be consumed, whether they are legal or illegal. Although drugs have health consequences and dangers, making them illegal - and keeping them illegal - will only bring additional death and suffering.

We should celebrate our success curbing cigarette smoking and continue to encourage people to cut back or give up cigarettes, but let's not get carried away and think that criminalizing smoking or making cigarettes illegal is the answer.