We all are told that smoking causes preventable deaths.
This is from a Canadian web-site;but,this holds true for us also.

http://surrealitytimes.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html

Conversation With "Wellness Promotion" Advocate
Wellness Promotion Advocate (WPA): The leading causes of death - heart disease and cancer - are preventable. We should be doing everything we can, to prevent these deaths. Nothing is more important.

Roy: No person's death can be "prevented" - we are all mortal and will eventually die from one cause or another. Clearly - heart disease and cancer deaths are unacceptable to you, for whatever reasons. What cause would you prefer people to die from?

WPA: I would prefer that they not die at all.

Roy: All human death is tragic, but as I said - we are all mortal. We are all going to die, someday. If we don't die from heart disease or cancer, we will still die from something. What would you prefer people to die from?

WPA: I would prefer that people die quietly in their sleep at a very old age.

Roy: Eh? You want people to die from a massive heart attack in their sleep? I thought heart disease deaths were unacceptable to you. Or did you mean the other, suspected cause of elderly person's nighttime deaths - centralsleep apnea? That's where you stop breathing, in your sleep, because most of your braincells controlling breathing have atrophied and died. You prefer death by suffocation?
WPA: There are many ways to die and not all of them are so horrible...

Roy: Here's a list of the most common causes of death. You've ruled out the top two - heart disease and cancer - so which of the remaining causes of death do you prefer people to die from? Medical error, stroke, emphysema, motor vehicle accident, diabetes, pneumonia, Alzheimer's senility, kidney disease, suicide, liver disease, high blood pressure, murder...

WPA: None of them.

Roy: You'd prefer that people die from one of the more obscure causes of death? Fibromuscular dysplasia of coronary arteries, perhaps? Polyarteritis nodosa? Pheochromocytomas? Excited delerium? Malignant hyperpyrexia? Congenital left ventricular diverticula? Cardiac hemangiomas?

WPA: Uh...

Roy: Yes - that's what I thought. You haven't thought this all through, have you? Obviously not.

And that is true of most "wellness promotion" advocates. They have conditioned, emotion-laden aversions to the idea of people dying from cancer (understandably) and heart disease. They don't want people to develop and die from those illnesses, but they haven't made any effort to contemplate the practical ramifications of reducing or eliminating those causes of death.

"Wellness promotion" has a knee-jerk "motherhood & apple pie" appeal to it - but only if your understanding of it is shallow and superficial, limited to social marketing slogans and semantic delusions about "saving lives" and "preventing deaths". It requires some, but not that much, further contemplation and research in order to comprehend that wellness promotion is Pandora's Box - and that other people's hands (health promotion technocrats) control the lid.

AND A BIT MORE:

Pharmaceutical products are developed to save lives. Tobacco, when taken exactly as directed, kills half of its loyal users"

BZZZT! Time to kill off that stupid propaganda cliche, once & for all.
Tobacco is not "the only legal product that, used as intended, can cause the death of the user". Adverse drug reactions are estimated to cause over 100,000 deaths per year in the US, and tens of thousands of deaths every year in Canada. An adverse drug reaction (ADR) is any unintended response to a drug. Most adverse drug reactions occur while a pharmaceutical product is being used exactly as prescribed and intended by the manufacturer. Prescription and OTC drugs are products that, used as intended, kill tens of thousands of Canadians every year!

Furthermore, most of the multinational pharmaceutical companies are also corporate scumbags - at least on par with the tobacco companies when it comes to marketing lethal or dangerous products, covering up evidence that their products are killing people, buying favorable and fraudulent research findings about their drugs, lying to the public, placing profit and greed above the wellbeing of their customers and society generally, and violating ethical business standards as well as breaking the law.

Pfizer, the drug giant has a huge list of trangressions against the public. A few of the more notable ones;
- Seducing top scientists and researchers into criminal conflict-of-interest:
Top NIH scientist pleads guilty

- Defrauding the Medicaid program thru deliberate overcharging:
Criminal prosecution of Pfizer

Marketing killer drug Bextra without adequate research:
Pfizer sued over Bextra

- Violating consumer protection laws against deceptive advertising, marketing cholesterol-lowering drugs that not only can't help the people Pfizer suggested they could, but that also increase risk of heart attack in those people:
Pfizer sued over Lipitor

- Ripping off the public thru price-fixing:
Pfizer pays huge criminal fines

- Marketing killer drug Celebrex:
Killer Celebrex

Then there's GlaxoSmithKline (formerly GlaxoWellcome or just Glaxo). Glaxo makes the drug wellbutrin (zyban), widely prescribed as an aid to smoking-cessation, as well as a host of other quit-smoking products. Glaxo funds lots of tobacco-control related research, and even has employees sitting on the boards of directors of many provincial Lung Associations. And, they are corporate scumbags of the first degree. Some of Glaxo's notable offenses:
- Blocking generic AIDS drugs being sold in African nations where AIDS is truly epidemic, putting MILLIONS of lives at increased risk:
Glaxo doomed millions

- Suppressing research finding that showed their antidepressant Paxil increases risk of suicide:
Killer drug Paxil

- Massive, ongoing deception of the public - profiting from selling false hope to millions of its customers:
Glaxo boss admits: "Our drugs do not work on most patients"

- Widespread bribing of doctors to prescribe Glaxo products unnecessarily:
4000 doctors charged in Italy

We all know the tobacco companies are unscrupulous corporate scum, that's ancient history already! True progressives have moved past being obsessed with that, and are now looking into and exposing the corruption, greed, and lack of ethical & scientific integrity on the other side - within tobacco control and other areas of health promotion including the pharmaceutical giants.

Great post.

One thing, though.......The tobacco companies are not scum unless you include McDonald's, KFC, Steak N'Shake, Burger King, Wendy's, Oscar Mayer, Johnsonville Bratwurst, any Pizza place that serves pepperoni and/or sausage, etc.........