Bill Gates and Mike Bloomberg Spend Half Billion to Nag World About Smoking

Yay. After spending good money on computer operating systems, Bill Gates is taking his share of the profit from my purchase to finance “Operation Global Nag” to pester the hell out of Joe SixPacks around the World about their smoking habits. Really Bill and Mike? Nothing better to do that export Ydoyouthink BS commercials to Asia? Gonna stage some “die-ins” at the Philip Morris headquarters in Bangladesh?

From the Times here:

Bill Gates and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced on Wednesday that they would spend $500 million to stop people around the world from smoking.

The $500 million would be spent on a multipronged campaign — nicknamed Mpower — It will urge governments to sharply raise tobacco taxes, prohibit smoking in public places, outlaw advertising to children and cigarette giveaways, start antismoking advertising campaigns and offer people nicotine patches or other help quitting. Health officials, consumer advocates, journalists, tax officers and others from third world countries will be brought to the United States for workshops on topics like lobbying, public service advertising, catching cigarette smugglers and running telephone help lines for smokers wanting to quit.

Half a billion could put in a nice sewer system in an African country. Oh well. Also according to the article is a questionable statistic from the World Health Organization that estimates a billion people will be dying in the next century from cigarettes. Good news for those Global Warming Believers!

On the other hand, it just heaps more guilt on the remaining American Indians who brought this scourge of smoking to the world. That’s right, I said it! The redskins killed billions of people with their “let’s smokem peacepipe; make friendly with whiteman” routine. I’ll keep that in mind next time one of them asks me to buy them a bottle of firewater, which they no doubt must drink in order to quell the guilty echoes of millions of dead smokers they hear in their heads. I might tell him no. I might tell him, “Listen to those echoes, Falling Squirrel. Those echoes say ‘Why did you and your kind kill me with the choking smoke of your forefathers, Falling Squirrel?'”

Hey, if the black man can blame me for 500 years of black oppression, I can certainly blame the red man for killing billions from tobacco.