Saturday Smoke
Or not, if Biden has his way.
The Biden administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took a significant new step on Wednesday that would effectively ban cigarettes currently on the market in favor of those with lower levels of nicotine.
Kiss those traditional Marlboros and Winstons good bye… the he-man’s cigarette of choice is gonna be a low nicotine, low-tar, probably low-taste smoke that identifies itself as real tobacco (but is as much real tobacco as a Elizabeth Warren is a real full-blooded Native American.)
“Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a proposed rule that, if finalized, would make cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products minimally or nonaddictive by limiting the level of nicotine in those products. If finalized, the United States would be the first country globally to take such a bold, life-saving action to prevent and reduce smoking-related disease and death,” the FDA said in a statement on Wednesday.
The FDA’s press release states that “the proposed rule would not ban cigarettes or any other tobacco products,” and instead “cap the nicotine level at 0.7 milligrams per gram of tobacco in cigarettes and certain other combusted tobacco products, which is significantly lower than the average concentration in these products on the market today.”
I gave up many decades ago, but in those days Carlton and Merit were the preferred cigarettes of people who didn’t like to share their smokes. NO BODY (other than a fella in my first German unit who would tear off their filters and therefore get some serious nicotine) wanted to smoke flavorless cardboard.
Fox News Digital reported earlier this month, when the rule cleared an FDA regulatory review, that if nicotine levels in cigarettes are lowered under federal regulation, experts say cartels running black market sales of cigarettes will likely benefit.
“Biden’s ban is a gift with a bow and balloons to organized crime cartels with it, whether it’s cartels, Chinese organized crime, or Russian mafia. It’s going to keep America smoking, and it’s going to make the streets more violent,” Rich Marianos, former assistant director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the current chair of the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network, told Fox News Digital earlier this month.
Just what we need – another drug passed into the control of the cartels. Face it, Americans are too damn stupid to look in a mirror and say “gee, if we didn’t quit TAKING drugs those evil cartels wouldn’t have a market to sell to, would they?” And how may hard-core smokers do you see fail to give up? There is a reason why Mr. Twain was right when he said “Giving up smoking is easy – I’ve done it hundreds of times.” And because of that, we can probably expect old time cigarette smuggling rising again.
I can’t be the only one seeing the irony of them making traditional cigarettes illegal – and pot legal?
Funny thing… they keep saying ‘it’s for your own good’ – tired of that phrase yet? Seems like any time the word “control” comes up, it’s never really about control of what they say it is – it’s control of YOU.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Biden
I may start growing (at least trying) tobacco in my backyard. Just a small patch. I don’t smoke, but I’m sure there would be a decent market for small batch home grown stuff. Just enough to keep me in pocket change.
See? There’s always a way around Gooberment regulations.
That is exactly what’s happening to the less than expected MARYJUWANNA money in the states that legalized a lot of personal growth plants. Mom and pop pot dealer can sell cheaper than the state can tax. Lol…. I think it’s hilarious. They completely sold the public on this vice tax windfall that’s getting drug down by the way the wrote the law. No one is enforcing the tax portion as far as I can tell. It’ll be the same if the keep pushing the magic mushrooms… once you open the flood gates. Oh well.
Grow rustica tobacco. Very hardy (no chems needed) and it is very flavorful and full of nicotine.
Reminds me of the lowering of Octane ratings to the point
where even a lawnmower needs additives.
I’m torn about the whole smoking argument. I’m all for individual rights, but I watched my father die from emphysema. Lived the last 10 years of his life not being able to catch his breath. Yes, it was that bad.
And I was an idiot who smoked two packs a day until I was 43. Luckily I was able to stop, but still years after quitting, I got a visit from the “Big C”. I was VERY lucky and now have been cancer free for quite a few years, but I wish I had never ever started the habit.
What did I gain from smoking? Nothing, but to each his own. Just don’t make me pay for your cancer treatment.
However, what will this BS from Biden end up doing? Some people will quit, but many will just double their smoking…or as in the article go the way of illegal smokes?
Frankly, I just wish that tobacco would disappear from the face of the earth.
People will just smoke more– more tar, etc.– to get nicotine.
The original Marlboro man was gay.
Come to where the flavor is, suck on it, take it all in.
Some Brit – Fancy a fag, mate?
Daisy Cutter,
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. (Seinfeld)
Jump to 4:00,
when Kramer becomes the Marlboro Man on Times Square.
Never got into cigarettes. The tax-free Marlboros were a HUGE oversees because Euro cigs are apparently like smoking a bone. Guys in the berthing would tuck cigs & lighter under their mattresses and light-up before their feet hit the deck in the morning. I never liked that. My son tells me smoking is verboten except in a couple of designated smoking pits, and that goes for vapes which is more popular than butts amongst the kids my boy’s age.
Hack Stone has a few sea stories regarding GI’s and tobacco.
First up was circa 1985. Drunk idiot Jarhead falls asleep in his rack while smoking. Wakes up to find the mattress on fire. Pours a soda on it, drags the mattress downstairs. By the time he gets to the 1st deck, it blazes up again.
Prior to that, Hack checked into 3rd Amphibious Assault Battalion. There was a BEQ that was uninhabitable due to fire damage. It seemed that one of the occupants liked to smoke, but did not like to empty the trash in his room before departing for work. He placed the trashcan, with hot cigarette ashes in it, inside his locked wall locker. You know the rest of the story.
Hack saved the best for last. He dates anyone to top this one.
Maybe 1999, possibly early 2000, 7th Comm Battalion Camp Hansen. Young hard charging Marine liked to smoke. He lived on the 1st deck, but found it too much effort to the twenty or thirty feet to exit from the center back door of the barracks to get to the “smoke shack”, a gazebo maybe twenty feet behind the barracks, so he would just climb out the window of his BEQ room. And this became a habit of his. Which was not a problem. Until one night he and his fellow Marines went out to Kinville and stimulated the local economy. They got back to the barracks, but hey, let’s keep this party going. They continue drinking, he falls asleep, wakes up, wants to smoke a cigarette, so he opens the window, and climbs out. But he is not in his room. He is in his buddy’s room. And his buddy does not live on the 1st deck. Can’t remember if the guy lived on the 2nd or 3rd deck, but for the next few months, Marlboro Marine was walking around the Battalion with two arms in plaster casts. Hack Stone had the urge to drape some towels over his arms so that he could walk around like a servant handing out towels, but Hack never did. 🥴
Oops
Back around 2003 we made a 0900 fire call to an outbuilding with a smoldering fire.
Arrived on scene and extinguished the dudes butt can that had been smoldering since he had left for work, the cops, always present, became very interested in the fellers’ plants growing in the outbuilding along with several baggies of processed cannabis.
Can’t top those, but smokers in the army will always hold a special place in my heart.
Before any extended field exercise, I’d pack at least a carton each of Marb Red and whatever that big menthol brand was (Newport, maybe? Been a while). For the first few days, I’d just hand out one or two fags (that idiom is the greatest thing England ever gave us) for the occasional bum to suck on, just so they knew I had some.
By day four, they would offer cold hard cash for each one. Somewhere around the start of week two, the inflation would embarrass even ol’ Uncle Joey Bidet; I once sold a pack of Reds for $80 (he’d offered $75, but I claimed I didn’t have change) and a single menthol for $20.
The army taught me many lessons – including basic economics and to limit my drug abuse to just booze.
1985, my first Med, we were only allowed 2 pack each going on liberty. Marlboros were only $5 a carton in the ship’s store because no tax overseas. Those red & white boxes were better than money in Barcelona & Palma. I didn’t smoke so I just carried 2 packs for my friends.
Vapes and nicotine pouches are most popular amongst the youth.
Nicotine pouches are the most discreet.
Dip was in short supply on my first Med cruise. Those packs of 10 in the ship’s store were sold as soon they were in stock. Then a few enterprising young sailors would re-sell, and re-sell, and so on. I hated those spit cups everywhere. Shit was NASTY.
Joe is just setting Crackhead Hunter up his next business deal, import export. 10% for the Big Guy.
Don’t fuck with the Kools!
8975-00-634-9797 Cigarette, Tobacco (Kool) Tax Paid, King Size
Although the refined man smokes a Newport Light.
There are some schools of thoughts/studies that suggest it’s not so much the nicotine that’s bad for you, but more so the chemicals and additives. Had a compatriot that had been smoking unfiltered Pall Malls, two (2) packs a day, since he was a young teenager. He died at age 97. Like others I didn’t smoke cigs until I enlisted and around week 3 of basic. “You not taking a smoke break, Private?” “I don’t smoke, Drill Sergeant.” “Well, then…come with me, I have a little detail for you.” “Damn!, guess I better take a smoke break then.” Being as they were packaged in the C Rats and one could get a carton at the PX for a $1.25 it was an easy habit to acquire. Quitting them was another matter. I still have one now and again just because it tastes good. Prefer a good seegar to just kinda chew on a bit and satisfy what Ann Landers referred as the “oral fixation”. “Nasty habit, Young Man, were you born in a barn?”
I think that the price of smokes now-a-days is more of a deterrent than the health considerations. Locally individual packs are about $10.00, and a big portion of that is the tax. There’s folks still getting busted today running cigs from GA, NC, and KY up north because of the tax difference.
It’s ALWAYS about the control…of We, The People.
Smoke em if ya got em……
This tracks with what one of my docs was saying when I took an unplanned vacation in the hospital at the end of November. He literally said he didn’t care if I continued the nicotine, but I damn well better quit smoking.
I quit smoking, and less than a month later kicked the nicotine, too.
Having a minor heart attack has a way of changing perspectives on things.
Cigs here are $10/pack, too, and the WA State sin tax is something like $2 on top of that. That never stopped me, but damn, did the man make a buck off me at a pack a day.
Something about prepare fits here too, I think.
Hack Stone was up in Frantic City a few months ago for a concert, and the Hard Rock Casino had a cigarette vending machine selling a smokes for $20 a pack.
As far as locally imposed taxes on tobacco to discourage usage and fund pet projects, that only leads to organized crime finding a new revenue stream to exploit. Wondering how much of that money from untaxed cigarettes is funneled to Hamas?
You spelled “tunneled” wrong.
Back in the Viet of the Nam during my Vietnam times, a carton of Marlboro’s cost about $2.30. That is 23 cents a pack.
So……people will just smoke x3 cigarettes instead of one get their nic fix.
How is this ‘ healthier ‘ ?
Just like low flow toilets. 🥴
When I was kid we had one of those toilets with the tank
mounted up near the ceiling. That thing could flush a full
diaper and take the seat with it if not for the bolts.
We used to find empty lucky stripes green packs on the ground and the first one to stomp on the pack was the winner. Dad used to send me to the candy store with a note for loose cigarettes that the store owner kept in an empty cigar box. We used to call them loosies. I tried one once and the smoke hit my chest like a rock and that was the end of that. One of the Brink’s workers from Syria used to roll his own. The indoor ceiling of the cab ceilings were coated yellow with the smoke stains. I got a truck assigned to me and I had to scrub the stained ceiling off.
Yeah, this’ll go about as well as Prohibition did in the early 20th century.
Roll Yer Own:
8975-00-641-8445 Smoking Tobacco (Bugler)
8975-00-641-8444 Smoking Tobacco (Bull Durham)
9920-66-027-2580 Cigarette Rolling Paper (Zig Zag)
Oh, and just in case any of you were wondering, Prince Albert is still in a can. You can get it two ways:
8975-00-663-6158 Smoking Tobacco (Prince Albert) Tax Free
8975-00-663-6159 Smoking Tobacco (Prince Albert) Tax Paid
In 1980s Germany,
the local European Marlboros tasted awful.
For something that closely resembled American Marlboro
(when the ration card ran out)
West was the closest choice. (advertising) “Let’s go West”.
The harshest cigarette I ever smoked was a German non-filter. I think it was entirely Turkish tobacco. I liked the English fags called Guards.
rgr769,
These were the smokes that local Germans liked to offer to Americans, then watch them deal with it.
Unknown to me, until today, these were BANNED in 1991.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roth-H%C3%A4ndle