The Sage Observer

Corporate Irresponsibility

          I would like to call your attention in this posting, once again, to the social irresponsibility of big business to our people and our nation with just one more example, the tobacco industry.

 In yesterday’s edition of The New York Times (January 18, 2014) titled, “Smoking Is Worse Than You Imagined”, the “Times” reported that, in a Report of the Surgeon General issued last Friday, the estimated costs of smoking to our nation has increased to between $289 Billion and $333 Billion a year for medical care and lost productivity, up from a previous estimate of $193 Billion. Accordingly, deaths have increased from a previous estimate of 443,000 to 480,000 per year; and, also, smokers have a much higher risk for lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD–You know what that is. You hear the term all the time–especially in pharmaceutical advertising) than smokers in 1964, despite smoking fewer cigarettes.

The report, also, tells us that they have now discovered that exposure to secondhand smoke can cause strokes; and that the risk of developing lung cancer has increased substantially because of changes in the design and composition of cigarettes, including ventilated filters that lead to more puffing of noxious materials and blended tobaccos, containing carcinogenic nitrosamines.

The government report says there is no doubt as to who is to blame. It is the tobacco industry. As a result, the Food and Drug Administration is about to begin regulating tobacco products, enact large tax increases, and spend huge amounts of money on ad campaigns–all because of the social irresponsibility and complete disregard for the well being of the people of our nation by another member of the corporatocracy. Are the tobacco companies really supplying a service to the people; or, on the other hand, is this just another day, another dollar at our nation’s expense? I say, “They don’t care who they kill as long as they make a buck”.

Ronald Miller

mtss86@comcast.net