So did you see the news? The big bad tobacco companies got hit with a 145 billion dollar judgment in the recent lawsuit brought by Florida Smokers! I lived in Florida once, and I used to smoke -- so how do I get my share of that immense windfall? Certainly other smokers in the rest of the country deserve a chunk of that, don't they? Or maybe none of them deserve any of it. Don't get me wrong, the tobacco companies have made vast amounts of money selling a product that was known to be both dangerous and addictive -- but then again, so do Coors, Busch, Jack Daniel's, Miller etc. Come to think of it, motorcycles aren't exactly paragons of safety either. I suppose we should also sue the entire country of Columbia while we're at it. Excuse me people, have we all forgotten the concept of personal responsibility? How many years have cigarette packages had the little warnings on them? Don't tell me you didn't know that smoking would some day kill you -- and it doesn't matter if tobacco companies did do little tweaks to the composition of the smokes to keep you interested, you still chose to light up in the first place -- and you kept lighting didn't you. I am a person of little will power, and I stopped -- so don't give me any of this bull hockey about being hooked. I didn't even get to use the funny little patches and gum -- I just decided that when my little disposable lighter died, so did my smoking habit (although I didn't realize how long those things lasted).
I suppose the next thing will be the repercussions -- the price of Oreo's will go up (remember who owns Nabisco? tobacco giant RJ Reynolds). I suppose auto racing will soon be a dying sport -- without tobacco sponsors for the cars and races (such as NASCAR Winston Cup series), they'll not be able to afford the every increasing cost of fuel (another problem in it's own right). On the other hand, land in Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina will probably be cheap and plentiful -- once all those tobacco farms go bankrupt.
All those rich Florida smokers can spend their last gasping days on Earth there.