Cigarette Smoking in American Society
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Cigarette smoking has been marginalized in American society for some time. The process began with the Surgeon General's Report in the 1960s, followed by laws removing cigarette commercials from television. The program continues to this day with further efforts to eliminate smoking from restaurants, the workplace, and other public sites, and to prevent young people from taking up smoking in the first place. One of the most recent efforts has been an Executive Order signed by President Clinton to limit tobacco advertising in any form aimed at teens and to set other limits on the industry. This proposal has been published by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is soliciting public comments before the order is implemented and before Congress takes up legislation either implementing this order or attacking it, which may depend on the outcome of the coming election. An analysis of the issues raised points to some of the elements involved, what the changes will mean, and what forces are being marshaled to challenge the FDA changes. THE U.S. AND SMOKINGAmerican society has changed in its attitude toward smoking, and the government started the process of change by banning cigarette advertising on television, after being prodded to do so by medical evidence of the harm caused by smoking. As Calfee (1986) notes, more recently the government has been asked to ban all cigarette advertising in magazine and billboard form. Calfee believes that such a ban is
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carbon monoxide makes its way into the fetal blood supply and attaches to hemoglobin molecules, reducing the amount of oxygen available to fetal organs by as much as 25 percent. Compounding the problem, nicotine constricts the umbilical artery, restricting the flow of oxygenated blood from the mother to the fetus. Researchers believe that the resulting oxygen deprivation, fetal hypoxia, may explain the increased incidence of miscarriage and stillbirth among smoking women, as well as the higher prevalence of fetalgrowth retardation, prematurity and low birth weight among their children (Papazian, 1991, 178).
The tobacco companies have been successful at staving off much proposed legislation that would have regulated smoking in various ways over the years, but more recently the industry has encountered more and more trouble in doing so. Municipalities and other entities have passed laws against smoking in certain public places for instance, and more and more businesses have set aside designated smoking areas or tried to reduce the smoking of employees or even to eliminate it altogether, as Brahm (1987) notes with reference to corporate smoking policies:
The questions no longer concern whether to institute a policy. Rather, they
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Approximate Word count = 2017
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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