Cigarettes are good for you because they are regulated by the FDA.

I just caught the tail end of an NPR story about how some "experts" fear that now that the FDA is charged with tobacco industry oversight, Americans will believe that cigarettes are safe.  On the one hand, such a fear is ludicrous.  Americans must understand that FDA approval doesn't guarantee the actual safety of a product.  I mean, the FDA approves of the fact that high fructose corn syrup appears in every food item we ingest.  High fructose corn syrup is killing us.  Ergo, the FDA's approval isn't so much a guarantee of food safety.  On the other hand, this is the first link that comes up when I google FDA + cigarettes.  Americans are pretty dumb.

Maybe the experts are overreacting when they believe that Americans will be tricked into smoking by government regulation of cigarettes.  But the government's support and enforcement of the transition to digital television is more than just the shift to a new era of idiot box technology.  In an article published this week, one sociologist sees government sponsorship of a brand new digital divide.  Those converter boxes?  They don't work well with rabbit ears.  They're designed to work with an antenna on a 30-foot pole.  This information?  Kept hidden by the government programs offering subsidies for a box whose residual cost is still high enough that very poor people won't be able to pay it.  This divide matters more than stories (again, thanks, NPR) dealing in sudden nostalgia for white noise and snow.  When the next hurricane is approaching New Orleans, the poor, the elderly, and the isolated may or may not be able to watch the weather and make informed decisions about whether to evacuate, even if they can coax their converter box to continuously broadcast a single channel for more than an hour (something I could not do when I hooked mine up in February) because digital signals tend to go out more quickly than analog.  The FCC is certainly aware of the limitations of digital broadcasting and aware of the fact that the 15% of Americans who still rely on non-cable television are poor, and more, don't have an antenna on a 30-foot pole.

I would say the FCC's warm and fuzzy assurances about digital TV are more dangerous than the FDA's oversight of the tobacco industry.  But that's just me.

Comments

[manda]

"But we haven't heard of any negative side effects yet, but we are pretty sure they are safe."

Pretty sure.
Now there is a scientific reassurance if I ever heard one. PHEEWWW!!!!