For A Few Dollars More. Federal Government Kills 400,000+ People Annually.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/health/report-card-on-tobacco-control-laws-a-mixed-174543.html
Report Card on Tobacco Control Laws a Mixed Bag

This articles claims that "The U.S. government took some important steps last year to prevent tobacco-related disease and death". You may ask, what does the American Lung Association consider important steps. You may be amused by the answer. Because it wasn't making smoking illegal. Making smoking illegal would have been an important step to prevent tobacco-related disease and death. Anything else is cheap theatrics.

One important step the U.S. government took to prevent tobacco-related disease and death was to more than double the taxes on cigarettes. I think I understand now. Anything that the U.S. government does that increases it's revenue is considered good for the country. Of course it is not good for the hundreds of thousands of smokers and the tens of thousands of second hand smokers who die from tobacco-related disease and death. But when you are talking about increased revenue for the U.S. government you need to keep your priorities straight. And what is good for the people ranks very low in the U.S. governments priorities.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/144904/yummy!_ammonia-treated_pink_slime_now_in_most_u.s._ground_beef
Yummy! Ammonia-Treated Pink Slime Now in Most U.S. Ground Beef
Another important step step the U.S. government took was to allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products. This is the same F.D.A. that allows a meat and meat byproducts seller to use an untested ineffective technology to kill E. coli and salmonella in ground beef. The same F.D.A. that then exempted the company from testing it's ground beef. The same F.D.A. that still hasn't done anything about the problem, even when school lunch programs started testing the ground beef and found it unsafe to eat and thus banned ground beef from school lunch programs. This is the F.D.A. that is going to protect the American people? Protect us from what?

Hmm. The pronouncements from the American Lung Association are starting to sound as honest as any other press release from the U.S. government.