Jackie Mason Quotes

Congress is as addicted to tobacco money as a heavy smoker is to the nicotine in his Marlboros.

WHO has transformed its war against smoking to a war against smokers.

Tobacco is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness.

We must help parents protect their children from the gravest health threat that they face -- an epidemic of teen smoking, spread by multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. I challenge Congress -- let's pass bipartisan, comprehensive legislation that will improve public health, protect our tobacco farmers and change the way tobacco companies do business forever. Let's do what it takes to bring teen smoking down. Let's raise the price of cigarettes by up to $1.50 a pack over the next 10 years with penalties on the tobacco industry if it keeps marketing to our children.

… There’s a lot of [tobacco industry] financial clout up here, and they do their best to reward their friends and punish their enemies …. They’re not really trying to accomplish an agenda, they’re just trying to stop one from ever being mounted against them.

Usually we trust that nature has a master plan. But what was it she expected us to do with tobacco?.

In the world of commercial speech, tobacco advertising bears the earmarks of an endangered species.

Tobacco is America's greatest gift to the world!

Sure, it is apparent that presidents are looking at polls, but they are also stepping up on issues. President Clinton stepped up on tobacco. He shaped the polls on the tobacco issue.

Does your desire to smoke anywhere, at any time, trump the right of others to breathe clean air … ? … The need to breathe clean air is more important than the license to pollute it.

We're loaning money for tobacco at below market rates of interest, and then we're spending money to tell people not to use the product.

Cigarettes are bad, but taxes and big government are worse.

Figuring that smoking kills about a third of all those who smoke, this tax could prevent the premature death of at least 2 million Americans alive today.

Pharmaceutical companies have the highest number of lobbyists and they pay them the most. A lot of them are former legislators.

Historically, tobacco control was not a partisan issue in American politics. Neither major party favored it. Republicans were sympathetic to corporate interests and Democrats were dominant in states where tobacco was grown and manufactured. However, beginning in the late 1960s Republicans began replacing Democrats in the South … and that liberated the Democrats to be the party of tobacco opposition.

Getting cigarettes out of the hands of kids before they get hooked, is family values.

I don't smoke, but people say that you get secondhand smoke. But this is a country that was founded mainly on the tobacco industry - tobacco and coffee. It's so surprising that they are now essentially making cigarettes illegal, when that is where the whole country came from.

No one smokes because they like the way it tastes. If we did, they'd make cigarette-flavored cookies, candy, ice cream. What is this? Marlboro fudge with nuts? Give me a scoop of that, willya? She's gonna have the Menthol Swirl with the Camel chip.

Tobacco is my favorite vegetable.

Don't let tobacco companies make the choices for you... they care about their own well-being, not yours

Smoking I find the most ridiculous of all the varieties of human behavior and practically the only one that is entirely against nature. Can you imagine a cow or any animal taking a mouthful of smoldering straw then breathing in the smoke and blowing it out through its nostrils?

The history of the tobacco industry is not a positive one.

If somebody invented cigarettes today, the government would not legalize them.

The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.

I just don't want anyone messing around with my pure smoking pleasure.