So another 440,000 have died. Some effective ban!
440,000 people in the US die each year from cigarettes.
The US Surgeon General Reports:
We ought to put a little more effort this year into our anti-smoking efforts in the US, in Israel and around the world.... tobacco use remains the leading preventable cause of disease and death in the United States, causing approximately 440,000 deaths each year and costing approximately $157 billion in annual health-related economic losses.
What can you do? If you smoke - stop. And more. Ask all the smokers that you know to stop smoking.
Won't you please use your blogs to spread this message and to help save lives?
And yes the news now (7/5/2006) is that rabbis say that smoking is a sin.
JTA - Rabbinical committee bans smoking - (finally does something useful) - Breaking News:
A committee of the centrist Orthodox rabbinical organization said Jewish law is opposed to smoking.
The halachah committee of the Rabbinical Council of America said the decision is based on a combination of the value placed by Jewish sources on health and scientific findings on the dangers of tobacco products.
The decision calls on all Jews to avoid or quit smoking.RCA Release -- Text of the Ban on Tobacco
Signatories on the ban:
This teshuvah is issued unanimously by the Va’ad Halacha of the RCA, whose members are Rabbi Yosef Adler, Rabbi Kenneth Auman, Rabbi Asher Bush (Chairman), Rabbi Daniel Feldman, Rabbi Tzvi Flaum, Rabbi Dovid Gottlieb, Rabbi Chaim Jachter, Rabbi Yaacov Lerner, and Rabbi Zvi Sobolofsky.
It is issued with the haskamah of the following members of the Va’ad HaPoskim: Rabbi Dovid Cohen, Rabbi Michael Rosensweig, Rabbi Hershel Schachter, Rabbi Gedalia Schwartz, and Rabbi Mordechai Willig.
2 comments:
"Have the rabbis done anything more about this since last year? So another 440,000 have died. Some effective ban!"
Y'mean, the ban was placed on every person in America?
The sad thing about the RCA psak is that Rabbi David Cohen (of Gvul Yaavetz in Brooklyn) is on the Vaad Haposkim of the RCA. This is the same man who heckled and publicly humiliated the Rav (and ultimately had to be dragged out of Lamport auditorium) at a public shiur at YU. This is the same man who has paskened that people can engage in all types of extremely unethical behavior (it is a good thing that Noah Feldman never heard him speak about business ethics). It is pretty sad that the Halacha Commission that was once headed by the Rav has stooped to this level.
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