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Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

> and politicians were arguing that tobacco wasn't unsafe for a long time

did these politicians suffer any discredit as a result?

I don't think so, really. It's surprisingly rare for politicians to face blowback for pushing stuff that later turned out to be obviously terrible. Everyone was pretty much pretending Strom Thurmond wasn't awful right up to his death, say.

I wonder why? Is the same phenomenon at play with Trump's approval rating? It's been in the high-mid-30s for many weeks now [1]. 80+ consecutive days at the time of this writing. Even outside of Russia-related scandals (like hiring Mike Flynn [3]), he has done some obviously bad things (like the Billy Bush tape [2]).

[1] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_and_Billy_Bush_re...

[3] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/sally-yates-pr...

https://web.archive.org/web/20010415085348/http:/mikepence.c...

Apparently not...

that's amazing (not in a good way)

Pence is pretty clearly saying smoking is bad for you.

>This is not to say that smoking is good for you.... news flash: smoking is not good for you. If you are reading this article through the blue haze of cigarette smoke you should quit.

But how bad? The context for that snippet is:

> We will hear about how this phalanx of government elates has suddenly grown a conscience after decades of subsidizing the product which, we are now told, "kills millions of Americans each year".

> Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political class and the media, smoking doesn't kill. In fact, 2 out of every three smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers do not contract lung cancer.

https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast...

I believe the quote 'smoking doesn't kill' is pretty clear of his intent.

Yeah, Pence is severely downplaying the risks but is not actually saying it's not dangerous. Note that this was 2001, seriously late in the day. Most of the serious denialism was 80s and earlier; Pence was probably one of the last people beating this drum.

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