Are the Tobacco Companies and Chemotherapy Drug Producers Partners in the “Cancer Industry”?
Each year, 400,000 people die from the effects of smoking cigarettes. That is nearly four times as many Americans, in one year, as died in Vietnam, Korea, and all the other conflicts around the world since World War II. Thousands of studies – literally, not an exaggeration – have shown a clear link between smoking and dramatically increased chances of dying from lung cancer and cardiovascular events like stroke or heart attack. Yet the tobacco companies are treated like honored pigs at the trough – especially at the Bush trough (formerly known as the U.S. government). A little over a week ago, a judge in Bush’s brother’s “kingdom” of Florida stood with the tobacco companies against the American consumers/cancer patients and handed the death barons a major victory against said American consumers/cancer patients. This “corporate-sponsored judge” ruled that the 700,000 plaintiffs in the case had no right to such “excessive” punitive damages: $1.45 billion dollars. Oh, really, Judge Marlbo
