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prime time.

In 1984, Tobacco industry is required to turn over a general list of cigarette additives annually to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office on Smoking and Health. The List is then locked in a safe. Disclosure to any other party is a crime. OSHA allowed to study the list, but lacks funds.

In 1988, In 618-page summary of over 2,000 studies of nicotine and its effects on the body, Koop declares, "It is now clear that . . . cigarettes and other form of tobacco are addicting and that actions of nicotine provide the pharmacological basic of tobacco addiction," .

It was not until the 1990's that the boom was started to be lowered on Big tobacco. By then, a great deal of the damage was done. That decade there was a list of 599 additives known to be in cigarettes( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L ist_of_additives_in_cigarettes )This was a report to the department of health and human services.

So taking all this into consideration, I say that while smokers did take the choice to light up, there is more to this story than just their personal choices. There was confusion on the issues and there was leverage buy the tobacco companies to keep them going.

As a community we were also responsible, we showed movies that said it was OK to smoke- we created a smoking culture. Our congress and legislators let it go on with pressure from the tobacco lobbies and pacs when they should have been taking action. Are the smokers the only people responsible , I don't think so. I buried a Mom when she was 60 over 20 years ago from the effects of tobacco. I was widowed at 49 from cigarettes and the disease that they caused to my spouse. While I know that they made choices, no one gave them the information to make better ones, till it was too late.

Learn more about this author, Linda White.
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