http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Smoking_Prevention_and_Tobacco_Control_Act


When I first read this a little over a month ago, I thought it was a hoax because at that time, they were claiming That Obama had already passed and gone into effect but stores were still selling vanilla cigarette and cloves. So, I had forgotten about it and never gave it a thought again, until recently when I received a message from a fellow goth who lives in South Carolina upset about the new act. Why? Because it bans cloves. And for those who don't know, to a goth, cloves are a aesthetic to us. What would we smoke in a gloomy graveyard when the moon is full, eh? But nevermind that, it is not the entire reason why I am upset about the new act anyways.

In this act, it has stated that cigarette companies are now to fully disclose the ingredients on every box of cigarettes and they have also banned the "mis-leading" terms "light" and "mild" and "low". Seems alright so far, right. Nothing too drastic as of right now. There is even more limiting from of advertising to stop attracting more youth from smoking (which might I add, it's not the advertisements; youth are going to smoke no matter what, it's always been like that even if there is a few percentage less smoking). So that basically means that the already limited smoking ads you seen in certain magazines and certain stores, you won't see anymore. I think they might had well said "No more advertising". The act also requires a smoking warning label to cover at least 50% of the box is BIG CAPITAL LETTERS. This I do not care about, everything in this act, does not bother mean, it's not that drastic or inhibits our rights thus far. This is what pisses me off: this act also states that flavor cigarettes (including cloves) are now banned except for menthol (cause its the most popular cigarette flavor; which is not true by claim and own experience with them). I believe that this is drastic.

It takes our rights, as people, and lets the govt. decided what we can and cannot smoke. Please, I beg you, don not presume that I write this and make judgment through bias: I am not a smoker. But I do strongly believe that this little section of the act greatly violates our rights to choose. I believe that it violates out unenumerated rights (which is "natural rights" or "fundamental rights") and also our freedom of thought (yes, it can because it no longer lets us make the choice of what we want to smoke anymore. For you are no limited to regular, menthol, and cigars).

My thoughts as to why Obama signed this bill? Obama smokes (oh, the horror!) and I believe that he wanted the press to get off of him about his smoking and make it seems as if he doesn't advocate in supporting the tobacco company make it seem like he is a "victim" of the tobacco industry because he has been quoted many times about how it's so hard for him to stop smoking. But that still doesn't give him the right to ban flavors and tell us what we can and cannot smoke. And if I've researched this well enough, I found out that Bush (yes Bush!) threaten to veto this law if it was passed and opposed it. Something that he finally did right and we weren't even aware of it!

Please, if you can, make this known to everyone you can. I haven't seen anything about it on the news or anything, so I'm starting to think it's one of those "silent" laws that our placed and everyone slowly finds out about it.