Gates, Bloomberg pledge $500M to combat smoking

And all this time I thought Bloomberg was the cheapest billionaire in history. Well, mabye I'm wrong, but look, 5 mil. is pocket change for hishonor, let's see if he follows up with some REAL bucks for REALLY good causes.!!

What's wrong with these crusading morons. I don't smoke and I can think of 500 million better ways to use that much money. How about working on poverty?, education?, Homelessness?, a cure for cancer, just to name a few.

Southbound wrote:

500 million could be better spent to research diseases that select their victims, not on so-called diseases that their victims select for themselves. People who choose to smoke CHOOSE TO SMOKE. What part of that doesn't Bloomberg get? Why would anybody donate money to help a non-disease when real diseases exist?

I thought of some quotes by Jesus Christ in the Bible about "you will always have the poor".

I think it was when Judas pointed out the money Mary Magdalene used to buy oil to anoint Jesus' feet.

Wonder if Bloomberg would refer to that if you had the opportunity to say what you posted to his face.

FWIW, he's changed parties a number of times.

I would think changing his religion would be no problem to achieve his goals.

Maybe he can take up where Jerry Falwell left off.

Jimmy wrote:

What's wrong with these crusading morons. I don't smoke and I can think of 500 million better ways to use that much money. How about working on poverty?, education?, Homelessness?, a cure for cancer, just to name a few.

Exactly.

Like I said to the other poster, wonder if Bloomberg will start quoting the Bible about "you will always have the poor".......

I would put nothing past this man.
Nothing.

He is too rich to be bought by anyone and can name his price anywhere.

Onassis enjoyed his riches.

Bloomberg uses his riches so no one enjoys anything.

Maybe Bloomberg can buy a few islands and set up some anti communes.
It would be a good use of his money.
Maybe the first and only one.

screw the local governments who want to stamp out smokers. you guys in n.y. elected mutimillionaire bloomburg. vote this ass out next election.also get rid of the hilabitch hillary and rangel. duh??????????bet boomburg don't pay the taxes he should.

People read about this $500 million dollar contribution that will take place over a period of five years and think, "Wow! Smoking's going to disappear!"

What they don't realize is just how much money has ALREADY been pumped into a campaign of social engineering that beggars anything done even under the most totalitarian regimes in history. According to the American Medical Association itself, the U.S. "Tobacco Control" effort spent over 880 million dollars just in 2001. http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/upload/mm/hod_ibo... And that $880 million figure doesn't even cover Big Pharma money pushing their NicoGummyPatchy products through lobbying or the money spent on antismoking/fundraising ad by the Cancer/Heart/Lung "charities."

In the last ten years it's likely that well over ten billion dollars has been spent to demonize (Antismokers prefer the word "denormalize") smokers, pressure/encourage people to quit, raise tobacco taxes, lobby for smoking bans, and make smoking less enjoyable, more difficult, and more expensive in every way possible. While I don't have the current figures at hand, I do have a report from the CDC for the period 1990 (when taxes and bans were close to nonexistent) to 2002 (when both were VERY existent!): http://apps.nccd.cdc.gov/brfss/Trends/trendch...

Those figures show that the national rate in 1990 was 23%. And the national smoking rate 12 years later, in 2002, was 23%.*EXACTLY* the same!

The World Health Organization's total annual budget is about $1.5 billion. Think of what the World Health Organization could do with another $1.5 billion to save the millions of children dying of malaria, pneumonia, and even simple diarrhea every year if they had this money for those purposes rather than having it wasted in a "War" that produces more hate than substance.

Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"

Southbound wrote:

500 million could be better spent to research diseases that select their victims, not on so-called diseases that their victims select for themselves. People who choose to smoke CHOOSE TO SMOKE. What part of that doesn't Bloomberg get? Why would anybody donate money to help a non-disease when real diseases exist?

Thank you. Well said.

It's amazing that the tremendous amount of money Gates and Bloomberg will freely spend on anti-smoking. It's a shame this money is not spent on working with local governments to renovate housing projects in urban areas, feed the homeless, etc...I know that I would directly use this amount of money to clean up the projects and provide the funds for the single mothers to attend school while providing the daycare for their children. This is embarrassing as an American!

TwoTap1 wrote:

It's amazing that the tremendous amount of money Gates and Bloomberg will freely spend on anti-smoking. It's a shame this money is not spent on working with local governments to renovate housing projects in urban areas, feed the homeless, etc...I know that I would directly use this amount of money to clean up the projects and provide the funds for the single mothers to attend school while providing the daycare for their children. This is embarrassing as an American!

I keep saying that about hitting a mega-millions lottery.

All I would want from a hundred-plus million dollar mega millions lottery is enough for my family and I to live comfortably for the rest of our lives. How much is that???... 5-million?.- Ten?...

The rest I would give away! Besides, what the hell would I do with (let's say)$150,000,000.00? Just write a check for 5 or 10 million out to me and give the rest away.

But the Lottery Commission hasn't been paying attention.

It's their money, they can do what ever the hell they want with it.