Rep. Steve Buyer (R-IN) served in Congress until 2011.
When you’re a congressman looking for your next job, selling out and becoming a lobbyist is an attractive option. You can even get a 1,452 percent raise. That’s why a lot of lawmakers start shilling for corporate interests while they’re still in office, so they can get generous payouts after they leave.
ProPublica’s Justin Elliot has an example of one such legislator. In 2009, Republican congressman Steve Buyer gave a speech defending smokeless tobacco, fighting back against lawmakers who wanted to regulate it. He argued that only the smoke kills people, not nicotine:
BUYER: You could have smoked…lettuce and you still end up with the same problems. You could cut the grass in your yard, dry it, and roll it up in aAi??cigaretteAi?? and smoke it ai??i?? and youai??i??re still going to have aAi??lot of problems. It is the smoke that kills, not the nicotine.
Watch it:
Reynolds American makes all sorts of tobacco and nicotine products.
So the next time you see a Member of Congress make some crazy defense of corporate wrongdoing, remember this: Maybe it’s just their version of a job interview.
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Do you think these idiots really believe what they say or do they just believe people are too dumb to realize whats happening.. I suppose if someone wants to smoke they’ll believe anything. God willing the rest of the population do not listen or they really hear whats going on. Job description I can believe.
Sometimes, they just say sh** that is SO DUMB, somebody thinks “it has to be true”….
Nicotine has been proven to be one of the most addictive substances known to man; the idea, though, that nicotine is the ONLY possibly dangerous ingredient in tobacco flies in the face of ANY sense, not just GOOD sense.
If SMOKING was the dangerous part, how come chewers get cancer in their mouths? Dumb a$$.
The irony of the progressives anti-tobacco zealotry is that Buyers is correct. It’s the smoke that kills. Smokeless tobacco is 99% less harmful then inhaling smoke several hundred times a day, and there is lots of good research to back that up.
Nicotine may be addictive but by itself it is very low risk. It’s the delivery method that matters. If you smoked tea leafs to get caffeine it would be just as deadly as smoking cigarettes. And yes, even smoking lettuce would be essentially as harmful as cigarettes. This is basic science 101, something the progressives appear to have forgotten, or never known.
Do any shops in london sell refills for the Milano Cigarette?