Hacker News Reader

Comment by apta | Hacker News Reader

It's disgusting how much power is being given to corporations that do nothing but strictly harm the population. Not only is the tobacco industry directly harming people by selling them poison, but all the pollution being generated by waste (just look at the ground next time you're walking outside to see all the cigarette butts), and then they lobby to push for these retardants to be pushed onto the furnishing industry, increasing not only monetary costs for the end consumer, but as we see here, causing health issues as well.

This is a tax everyone is paying for some smokers to get their fix. Absolutely disgusting and despicable. Yet, no one has the guts to step up and shut down the entire industry. It's unfathomable to what extent greed makes humans behave.

View on HN

> just look at the ground next time you're walking outside to see all the cigarette butts

Amusingly, this is more of a result of anti-tobacco campaigns. I have recently visited Prague and one of the things I noticed were the ashtrays everywhere and very few cigarette butts on the street. But in NYC, where I live, there are no ashtrays and so you get cigarette butts all over the place. Because smokers are not going to quit smoking simply because you removed all the ashtrays.

> Not only is the tobacco industry directly harming people by selling them poison

Everything's a poison depending on the dose. The same could be said for alcohol or junk food.

> just look at the ground next time you're walking outside to see all the cigarette butts

Or soda bottles or fast food wrappers or oil dripping from cars or...

> and then they lobby to push for these retardants to be pushed onto the furnishing industry

This is a result of TB117 being signed by CA gov Jerry Brown in 1975 [1], more than 10 years after the surgeon general's report about cigarettes and lung cancer. If any lobbyists are to blame I would tend to look at the chemical companies.

What's more, California required the retardant, so furniture companies decided instead of making california-specific furniture, they'd put the retardant into all furniture. There's at least some blame on them as well.

> This is a tax everyone is paying for some smokers to get their fix.

I'd argue it's a tax everyone pays because California's government is/was run amok.

[1] https://www.kqed.org/science/11318/its-official-toxic-flame-...

> Everything's a poison depending on the dose. The same could be said for alcohol or junk food.

I mean, yea? The alcohol industry in the US and worldwide is kinda shameless in how much they reinforce overindulgence with their advertisements.

Junk food should absolutely have a tax, not a sin tax because it's bad - but a tax that brings in the currently externalized health costs that will come from eating it regularly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com