Cigarette smoking --- "coffin nails"

The NYTimes reports that a federal judge has ordered "strict new limitations" in the marketing of tobacco. ( It is, complex, as these thing are.)

In one sense the tobacco compaies were shafted. There were warning labels on the cigarrette packages. As a boy' I heard that cigarettes were called "coffin nails." I think Sir Walter Raleigh knew about its ill-effects. Yet, I began smoking, first cigarettes, then a pipe, the cheap smelly cigars. For a while, I purposefully walked behind people to get a whiff of the smoke. Consumers knew. I finally quit about 25 years ago. It wasn't easy.)

Now I find that tobacco smoke stinks and leaves an odor for days.

But the vendetta against the tobacco companies has cut smoking dramatically.

It is a poisonous weed that kills people.

Sometimes big government works, even when it is technically unfair.

(Meanwhile the tobacco companies happily continue to export the weed to overseas.)

Ben