Dan Smith: We Can't Afford to Wait to Regulate Tobacco

The federal government regulates everything from breakfast cereal and hair dye to horse feed and breast implants. The list of items regulated by our government includes just about every consumable product in America, from prescription drugs to vegetables. But there's one item strangely absent from the list, one that causes more preventable deaths than any other product. A powerful and well-funded lobby has managed to keep tobacco off the list of federally regulated products for more than 40 years following the first surgeon general's report linked smoking to cancer. Even today, a simple list of ingredients is not required for tobacco products. Tobacco companies have taken advantage of this lack of oversight and have shamelessly marketed to under-aged recruits through cartoon advertising, nicotine and ingredient manipulation,... [read full story]