A Business To Die For
By Wetdog

Imagine if you will, that there is a new product on the market that comes in the shape of a marker. When you take off the cap and rub the end of the marker on your arm, you feel tingly for about five minutes. However, after about 25 uses, the product is finished and you will have to buy another one. The catch is that the company that makes this product puts special additives in the marker for the sole purpose of ensuring you will want to keep buying this product. Not only will you want to keep buying the product, you will have an uncontrollable urge, every couple of hours, to pull the marker out of your pocket and reapply it to your arm. Then, after a couple weeks, that tingly feeling you used to feel when you applied the product will subside, but you will still have that urge to use it. Furthermore, those same additives that the company put in the marker to make sure you keep sending it your money, can potentially give you cancer when exposed to excessively. 

Now take a step back and analyze the situation. Here is a product that serves no purpose to the users at all. It is disguised, in the beginning, with a mild sensation in order to fool the consumers into believing there is a reason to be using this product. Although, the actual purpose is to give the consumers a chance to use the product long enough to become addicted. This way the manufacturers can ensure there will always be a market for this product, because once the consumers realize that there is no purpose, they have no choice but to keep buying the product. The company exists for the sole purpose of stealing the consumers' money, at the cost of the consumers' health. The company gets rich and the consumer gets killed.

Now ask yourself this: would you like to try this marker? If you smoke cigarettes, your answer should be yes. The tobacco industry is a multibillion-dollar industry that strives on the consumers' uncontrollable desire to use its product, steaming from the chemicals they knowingly add to the cigarettes. No other industry in the world would be able to get away with doing something of this nature. But make no mistake about it; the government will never condemn this industry. The government may force certain regulations upon these companies, but all the while maintaining a certain degree of blindness to the actual corruption that exists within the industry. Why would the government want to nullify such a profitable business? The tobacco industry provides the governments with enough money to ensure the longevity of these big tobacco companies existence. 

Last year alone, the tobacco companies profited from $150 billion in sales (thetruth.com, 2001). As the average person is aware, with each purchase of any product that isn't deemed as a necessity, the government charges a certain percentage of the amount as tax. For example, a tax of 6% on $150 billion would result in the government receiving $9 billion. That amount alone would be enough to pay for every child in the United States of America to go to college. The government is not about to deprive itself of such a large amount of money for the sake of helping the people live longer, for poor health is another profitable division of the economic world.

Each year, tobacco results in $50 billion in direct medical costs (www.cdc.gov/tobacco, 2001). In the United States, this amount is even more meaningful to the government because of the lack of heath care available. Also, each year, tobacco results in 400 000 deaths (www.cdc.gov/tobacco, 2001). The tobacco industry creates an extremely large amount of jobs in the medical profession alone. When doctors are kept busy treating people for various ailments resulting from direct tobacco use, more money is generated for the medical profession. A basic class in economics will show that this, in turn, puts an enormous amount of money back into the economy. Undoubtedly, if the tobacco industry went out of business tomorrow, within the next year, there would be an extreme impact on the global economy. The government is not about to force the entire world into an unexpected recession in order to protect consumers' health. 

Lastly, and probably the most controversial element, big tobacco plays an intricate part in the election process in the United States. What is often referred to as "soft money" during these electoral campaigns, big tobacco companies "anonymously" donate large amounts of money to the campaigns in order to help the political parties become elected. The thought process behind this tactic is the idea of, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours". No political party that comes into power is going to make any serious attempt to stop these companies from operating in the same manner that they have been doing for decades. The elected party will turn a blind eye, and softy make regulations to create the appearance that it does care about this situation. However, in the end, tobacco will remain a "legal drug", and the big tobacco companies will be allowed to keep manufacturing this deadly product. The path will be paved for new consumers to become addicted and fill the role of the ones that died from the direct use of this product. 

It is up to us, the people, to make a difference in this situation because the government that we entrusted in, to make the best decisions possible for us, has too much to lose to make a real attempt to stop it on our behalf. This situation is a hypocrisy, and complete corruption that we all need to expose in order to save our youth and ourselves. It is time people come to terms with their addiction to this deadly product. All too often a smoker uses the excuse, "I smoke because I want to smoke". A smoker may have started to smoke because he or she wanted; however, they are still smoking because that is what the tobacco companies want. If you, or someone you love smokes, it is up to you to make a difference. This habit is employing thousands of people, and making the ones that are in control, the ones with the power, extremely rich. But they are getting rich at the expense of your life. Do not be a slave to this dishonesty any longer. Please, help stop big tobacco, dead. 

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