I saw a program recently about smoking in Indonesia. Phillip Morris was a big focus. It would seem they are targeting a basically uneducated population (in regards to tobacco) with no real laws concerning purchase and consumption of tobacco. http://beta.fool.com/leokornsun/2013/01/23/big-tobaccos-final-frontier/22285/ There are a lot of young children smoking over there. A wide open market for sure and it seems Phillip Morris has really swooped in on same. A company has to make money right? As it gets tougher in nations that are "cracking down" on smoking you have to target any market I suppose. If there are fewer laws it would only make sense to target those. Still, I have a problem with folks that are more than happy to push a known health hazard on children. This coming from a smoker. I KNOW smoking is bad for me and I don't consider it "cool". It's an addiction I haven't given up. Plain and simple. However, if I'm 10 years old in Indonesia and bombarded with ads it's a different story. Smoking IS cool. I will admit I'm biased, especially when it comes to Phillip Morris. Why? About 25 years ago I managed a gas station for a chain. One of our manager's meetings involved a visit by a rep from Phillip Morris. At that time they were targeting the Mexican market. He freely admitted they were targeting teen smokers. I'm not talking 18 - more like 13-14. Get them hooked early and you have a Marlboro smoker for life. Even if it's shortened. He seemed very proud of this. Again, I know it's about money and if it had been a RJ Reynolds rep or any other company I would have felt the same way. Just happened to be Phillip Morris and the Marlboro man was cool. He was "American". My real problem with the whole scenario is how can people be such heartless bastards? Is it "I have a job, I make good money and who cares if a bunch of illiterate foreigners die of lung cancer?". What are your thoughts on this?
Thank You For Smoking (movie) is about "big tobacco"...the business and marketing sides of it. In it, the "Marlboro Man" is offered a bribe to shut the hell up about his lung cancer.
There is also the not so fictional movie The Insider with Russel Crowe. Companies like RJ Reynolds are a cancer on society.
Companies shouldn't market addictive products to kids. On the other hand, adults should have the freedom of choice without a Nazi-style nanny state telling them they can't have them. That's something Bloomberg should pay attention to concerning sodas in New York. View attachment 1543
Cocaine, Crack, Prostitution, Meth, Gambling,....all good with you? Or should the nanny state curb adults freedom for these items too?
If we're going to allow an adult the choice to commit homicide on their own baby, where do we draw the line? In such a state, giving an adult the choice to ingest cocaine, crack or meth into their own bodies seems rather mild, don't you think? I've previously stated that prostitution should be legalized. Gambling? Give me a break. It shouldn't even be an issue.
So you have YOUR lines and the rest of us should abide by them? Why YOUR lines? How about mine? Or the guy down the street? Or the woman down the street? What makes your line so damn perfect? That was my point.
I didn't say where I draw the line. I asked where "we" (as a society) draw the line. From a philosophical standpoint, I don't see how you could possibly be opposed to any substance a person chooses to ingest into their own bodies since you agree that the same person has the choice to commit homicide. Just exactly what rights do you think a free society should not possess?
Because it isn't simply a matter of a person, adult or otherwise, ingesting a substance. Its a matter of someone else manufacturing, distributing, and profitting off of a dangerous addictive product. Should I be able to sell suicide machines to adults coated with a chemical that makes people hallucinate and in some cases causes them to use the suicide machine? Why not?
How can you be so hypocritical? Abortion is just a "matter of choice" according to you. Someone manufactures medical devices used in abortion procedures, they distribute those devices, etc. and they're certainly making a profit off products that kill. But, that really isn't the point here, is it? You've gone off on yet another tangent and missed the point entirely. The use of tobacco, cocaine, meth, etc. are simply choices an individual makes. What I'm asking is how one can advocate for the choice of a person to commit homicide, but wouldn't agree to let that same person make the choice to ingest drugs. Now, my question to you is: Do you advocate for a person's freedom of choice to ingest drugs into their own body?
You say I'm off on a tangent but YOU brought up abortion in the middle of a thread about tobacco? Comparing tobacco to other drugs is hardly a tangent. Calling a perfectly legal medical procedure a homicide is just how crazy you are. Since you have no ability to see the stupidity of your own points, I will once again roll my eyes and move on rather than watch you dig deeper and deeper into yet another strawman argument. Try to remember, not every topic, issue, argument is about the religious view of abortion. BTW Making your own cocaine, growing your own tobacco, or cooking your own meth is a choice. Selling those things to others is a different choice entirely. That is the topic of the thread straw MAN.
No, but every argument about abortion is also an argument about freedom of choice. Freedom of choice is what it boils down to when we're talking about an individual's decision what to place into (or remove from) his/her body. You advocate for an individual's freedom of choice to remove whatever they want from their body, but will you advocate to give them the same freedom to ingest what they want?
The being gestating in a female hominid's womb has life and is also a hominid. Taking the life of a hominid is termed "homicide" (or literally "the killing of a hominid"). Currently, our laws allow the killing of that being, but it's still homicide.
Nonsense! Homicide is an act of a human killing another human. While homicide is commonly thought of as criminal, it refers to the act in general, which is sometimes legal. The vast, vast majority of abortions take place in the first trimester when the "baby" as you called it is either an embryo or at the end of three months is a fetus. Which one of those two sound like "human" to you? You're wrong about the legal definition, you're wrong about the medical definition, you simply push the religious view that your silly church tells you to push. Maybe the rest of us don't give a damn what your superstitions are?
It's quaint that you don't consider the gestating, living being inside a woman's womb "human". Now, it might not be a VIABLE human outside the womb and it may not be a FULLY-FORMED human, but it's still human. What would you call it if not "human"? Anyway, that's not the crux of this argument. I brought up the abortion analogy to compare it to the choices smokers have. Smokers (at least the tobacco smokers in most states) are using a perfectly legal substance to ingest into their bodies. As far as the adults are concerned, don't you believe they should have that choice? I've already answered the OP when I gave my opinion that addictive substances shouldn't be marketed to children. I expanded on the argument to include my opinion on whether or not adults should have the choice to ingest (fill-in-the-blank) substance into their bodies. I'd really enjoy hearing your opinion. Would you care to share it with us?
