So you want to buy cigarettes - are you pregnant, ma'am?

[aephi alum]

I recently saw a proposal that would seek to better educate women about the dangers of smoking during pregnancy - premature birth, low birth weight, etc. All in all, not a bad idea.

However, one of the provisions of the proposal was that whenever a woman of childbearing age wants to buy cigarettes, the merchant must ask her if she is pregnant, and if she answers in the affirmative, the merchant must provide her with educational materials about the harm that smoking during pregnancy can do to a fetus. Merchants who fail to comply would be penalized. (It's unclear whether the merchant could still sell the cigarettes to the pregnant woman.)

This is not a proposed law, but rather a proposal for a policy for a particular company that manufactures cigarettes.

Discuss...

[James]

Goodness . . . I can see a loy of paranoid women going home thinking . . . am I fat? Am I late? Why did he ask ME? Ugh.

Maybe I am pregnant . . ..

But well . .its a bad idea for a law. If they are that worried about it, just put a package insert in the box.

[Tom Earp]

Well, for one who is trying to make a living from Tobacco along with Thousands of People are taking the Heat for the Beuhypocrasy!

For years, we and the people of Alchohol, are getting taxed, sued and spit at.

The first cash crops so to speak of the USA were Tobacco and Alchol, not Tea and Cotten!

Do any of you have a fathom of an Idea of the amount of Tax money from these two products!? No,? Well hell know!

In 2002, 1 Cigarette Co. Gave 19 Billion in Taxes to the Federal Govt. That was just 1 !! Add to that, 3 other Major Tobacco Companys who also pay taxes, not counting The States who tax the living Hell out of these products!


Now, I ask you this, if all of these Billions and Billions of Dollars are taken away, where is that money going to come from???

[33girl]

This is ridiculous. When I'm at my dad's I often run into the store and pick up cigarettes for him. Just because I'm buying them doesn't mean I'm going to smoke them.

If this goes through, then they also need to ask people who buy more than one box of Ho-Ho's at a time how they plan to exercise to take off the weight.

[swissmiss04]

Even though this is a matter of free choice, in a way, it isn't. What a pregnant woman does with her body affects the baby and the baby has no control. I would hope that an expectant mother would have the best interest of the baby in mind. I would say (cringing) that this bill violates her rights. Yes I think it's stupid. Yet, we have no right to legislate what people do. You'd have to be illiterate or stupid not to know that smoking is harmful to yourself and your unborn child. We can't say that these mothers to be are making uninformed decisions. Just stupid, and unfortunately, it's not against the law to be stupid.

[cherrycola]

Oh my god that is the most asinine thing I have ever heard. It is up to a woman to choose how to treat her body. Also doctors should be educating women not clerks in a grocery store.
I think people need to stop trying to force their ideas on others!!

[aephi alum]

I should clarify that I saw this not in the context of a bill/proposed law, but as a possible company policy that shareholders are being asked to vote on adopting. It's unclear whether women would be asked about pregnancy or given the literature if they were buying any brand of cigarettes or just brand X. It's also unclear what the penalty from company X would be for merchants who didn't comply, and whether compliance means just giving out the literature with the cigs or refusing to make the sale at all.

I myself wouldn't want somebody asking me if I'm pregnant every time I got a pack of cigs. Or a bottle of wine. Or a rare steak. It's really none of their business.

(and 33girl, I like that Ho-Ho's idea )

[Rudey]

Why ask anything?

Any health costs related to smoking that the child has, even into adulthood, should be taken from the parents. I'd like to pay less in insurance and taxes that go to treating people harmed because of this.

-Rudey

[dakareng]

And how often do they card people now? If they can't keep cigarettes out of the junior high schools (which I do agree with. 15 year olds should not be getting an addiction that they don't appreciate the long term implications), what makes any rationale person think that handing out literature is going to do anything but create litter?

Just another way that government is trying to practice medicine. Sorry but I agree with cherrycola. Education is the job of health care professionals, not some bored clerk who barely speaks English and would question any woman who was larger than a size 10 if they were pregnant.

[1savvydiva]

Originally posted by 33girl
If this goes through, then they also need to ask people who buy more than one box of Ho-Ho's at a time how they plan to exercise to take off the weight.

LMAO