Congress Keeps Bashing Smokeless Tobacco

On Wednesday, April 14, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the House Subcommittee on Health will hold a hearing entitled “Smokeless Tobacco: Impact on the Health of our Nation’s Youth and Use in Major League Baseball.”

The hearing will examine the prevalence and use of smokeless tobacco products, diseases linked to the use of these products, and the correlation between smokeless tobacco use by youth and Major League Baseball players.

Just when you thought The PACT Act, The Tobacco Act, BATF, and FDA were all Swedish snus users had to worry about, along comes the House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.

I know; what does Energy and Commerce have to do with smokeless tobacco? It seems that under their fold is a Subcommittee on Health. Why, I have no practical idea. The Subcommittee on Health has decided to attack smokeless tobacco’s influence on “the children” by the use of Moist Snuff and Chew by Major League Baseball Players.

You can tell from the document that this will be a fair hearing: they qoute the anti-all-tobacco zealots of Committee on Tobacco Free Kids as a major information source.

After FDA and PACT, hasn’t the tobacco issue been milked enough by the pandering idiologes in Washington? Shouldn’t they be more concerned that as of today, Medicare reimbursements to Doctors is being again cut…this time by 21% This will lead to the majority of doctors refusing to take new Medicare patients.

Shouldn’t the Subcommittee on Health be more concerned that the rammed-through Obama Health Care initiative eliminates Medicare Advantage Plans beginning in 2012? Without these Advantage Plans, middle to lower income individuals will not be able to afford straight Medicare’s co-pays, deductibles, lack of dental or eye care benefits?

Shouldn’t the Subcommittee on health be more worried that without Medicare Advantage Plans which provide prescription drug coverage, seniors will be forced to buy the very expensive Medicare Part D drug coverage?

No of course not. The effects of smokeless tobacco products on “the children” by the use of it by Professional Baseball Players; THAT is a crisis requiring immediate attention!!!

I am REALLY getting tired of money and manpower wasted on bureaucracy and Big Government’s unchecked skyrocketing growth. This hearing is unnecessary; this Subcommittee is unnecessary, and how it ended up under the House Committee on Energy and Commerce is just ridiculous.

Thousands upon thousands of Departments, Divisions, Committees, Subcommittees, and other government agencies are all trying to regulate the same things; often contradicting each other. Citizens and businesses have no idea whether or not they are in compliance without hiring expensive lawyers to interpurt this tangled ball of yarn for them. Even then, depending on the Agency involved, they can pick whichever inturpretation they want until all this ends up in Court. What a collossal waste of taxpayer dollars!

So influence, power, money and absolute power corrupting absolutely, why is this happening? Who wins? The lawyers, of course. They work both sides taking as much in fees as they can.

Amerika 2010; a Nation by the Lawyers and For the Lawyers.

Totally disgusted,