Let us hope they are. A wailing letter to the editors of the Lancet, signed by Stanton Glantz and other anti-tobacco fanatics, complains that the Dutch government “is all but closing down its tobacco control operations”. One can only hope this is the case and wish that other governments might follow suit. Apparently:
Blood in their lungs and on their hands! At this rate of hyperbole, easing anti-smoking restrictions will soon be considered – by these goons anyway – akin to, I don’t know, failing to stop the Rwandan genocide or, more acutely in the Dutch case, the massacres at Srebrenica.It would be a matter of no little shame to a country that prides itself on a compassionate and inclusive ethos if its government were to abandon smokers to their fate. Every death that ensued would not just be the responsibility of the tobacco industry, which continues to promote its lethal product, but also of every politician in the Dutch Government who chose to look the other way and allow it to happen.
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