Jay Leno Quotes
I’ve been hosting the Today Show for 22 years. When I started, marijuana was illegal, and you could smoke cigarettes anywhere you wanted.
Marijuana had been made legal in a number of states at that time. Based on the example of New York City, many other cities of the world were just then passing ordinances to make it illegal to smoke in any public place or any private establishment that serves the public.
Jay Leno, Political Comedian, NBC, Tonight Show, February 6, 2014
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Bloomberg was the first public official in the world to push for and pass a law banning smoking in all offices, hotels, restaurants, and other public places despite huge opposition funded by the tobacco companies and many of the business and restaurant owners. Despite the fact that it would literally save thousands of lives a year, a ban was feared by politicians as it might harm business, tourism and their own political positions. However, after New York banned smoking, other cities started to do the same, not only in America but all over the world. This saved millions of lives. One courageous man, a single politician, changed much of the world, and saved many more lives than most doctors will.
The World Health Organization, a component of the United Nations, advocated national restrictive legislation to control and eliminate smoking. The smoking addict, hooked on nicotine was caught between public health efforts to regulate and eliminate tobacco and the efforts to treat the addicts and respect the individual’s right to freedom of choice.
The DEA is the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Friedman was an advocate for the legalization of illicit drugs, claiming that the harm that is done by making drugs illegal is greater than that which would occur if drugs were legalized. He also observed that alcohol kills times the number of Americans than does illegal drugs and tobacco kills four times as many as alcohol.
The. law was enforced and upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court (Austin v State) which recognized the health danger of tobacco. Tennessee was an agricultural state where tobacco was grown and the law was repealed as the result of political pressure. But this is the first and only absolute state prohibition on tobacco that has been enacted in the United States.
This is a classic example of the interaction between legislation, health and science. In 1931 the State of Michigan passed a law to protect the public health. It was written to ensure that there would not be unhealthy or dangerous substances added to cigarettes or the tobacco in cigarettes. No “ingredient deleterious to health” could be put in a cigarette. However, although it was not generally known at the time, there are few substances known to man that are as “deleterious to health” as the tobacco itself. The law protected public health, but the enforcement did not concentrate on the right ingredients.
This quotation not only illustrates Ford’s wide ranging concern about public affairs but illustrates that the addictive properties of cigarettes were known long before the cancer and other disease causing properties of tobacco were understood. Yet the addictive properties were the last deleterious effects of smoking that the tobacco companies would admit to. At the end of the 20th century, the CEO’s of the major tobacco company all lied to Congress in hearings, claiming that cigarettes were not addictive. Ford and millions of people knew better generations ago.
The President smoked cigars but never in public:
Even in 2011 smoking caused over 300,000 and drinking alcohol another 100,000.
James Douglas Muir Leno is an American television host, comedian, and writer. After doing stand-up comedy for years, he became the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 to 2009. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00pm ET, also on NBC. After The Jay Leno Show was canceled in January 2010 amid a host controversy, Leno returned to host The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on March 1, 2010. He hosted his last episode of The Tonight Show on February 6, 2014. That year, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame. Since 2014, Leno has hosted Jay Leno's Garage.
