Dealing Death Legally

Each time I go to a super market or major discount store and see racks of cigarettes, snuff and chewing tobacco, I think of the more than 300,000 people in the United States and 500,000 people in Europe killed each year by tobacco products. And I wonder, "Do these retailers have a conscience? Do they care at all about human life?"
The middle aged lady behind the counter just works there. It's not her decision to sell the stuff. Same with the manager. You can ask questions all the way up to the corporate board rooms. "Business is business. We have to compete."
Obviously profits from sale of tobacco products are more important to them than human lives.
Tobacco bad news is not hidden in a corner. "Big Tobacco needs to recruit 500,000 new smokers each year to replace the ones who die prematurely due to smoking-related illnesses . . ." news reports quoted David Byrne, the European Union health commissioner after the EU outlawed tobacco ads on December 2, 2002.

In the United States the tobacco industry has been socked with billion-dollar court judgments for killing people. Yet the industry considers those losses part of the cost of doing business and keeps on going. Grocery chains, discount stores, and drug stores keep on retailing the deadly products, some of which finds their way to teenagers who become addicted and fill the ranks of the old smokers who are dying off.
Tobacco farmers keep on growing it. Big Tobacco keeps on making cigarettes, snuff, and chewing tobacco. Wholesalers keep on distributing. Retailers keep on selling. People keep on dying. Who cares?
I started smoking when I was 15, before I had enough sense to make such a life or death decision. I fortunately was able to quit when I was 30. I have outlived my old friends who could not quit. I have been present many times when people died, killed by tobacco. When I see a man die, gasping for breath in cancer-filled lungs, I think of those racks of cigarettes, the nice lady selling them, the store manager, the president of the company, and the board of directors. Corporations are not mechanical entities out of control. Humans make up the mechanism that grows, makes, distributes, and sells tobacco. Have they no conscience?
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