Pat, regarding Starr's association with tobacco interests and if representing a murderer would cast the same ill association. Lets look at that argument.
First, a murderer is usually an individual not a business interest group. A murder is most often an act of passion whose circumstance society, through the arguments of a good attorney, might see as having discretion in punishment. Some murders are pre-meditated, ususally for money or some other form of power. Its those murders which we as a society react most strongly to, because there's an intent and calous disregard which is against life. We lock those up or put them to death out of harms way.
The business of tobacco provides a product which we know is highly addictive, causes cancer and other diseases. The industry spends billions on marketing worldwide, attempting to link its use to pleasure and status. Yet the consumer is instead being taken down the path of being the victim of a drug dealer in a three piece suit.
Those who defend tobacco do so because of the money and have low ethics regarding the pre-meditated poisoning of our children.
If you've ever visited a cancer ward or attended an autopsy there would be little doubt in your mind that this is a drug cartel driving Mercedes over people's lives. If one wants to defend tobacco as an adults right to choose their own poison, then lets be as fair as we are to the tobacco industry and open up all forms of self and social abuse including drinking, shooting up, pot, pills, flagellation, prostitution and whatever else you want. Smoking kills more people each year than prostitution, heroin and suicide_ yet if Starr were representing those interests you would certainly think the worse of him as a hunter and judge of moral wrong and illegality. Why? Because the tobacco defence, which Starr participated in, is one of massive perjury and obstruction. |
