Well, I don't intend to fire up a general controversy about this issue and Obama's signing apparently unpopular bill after unpopular bill. Although I'm a neutral outsider and just an occasional visitor to the US I dare to say that it really seems like he's sitting in between the chairs as for a lot of current issues, not to say he's a puppet of lobbyists on one hand and perhaps of many of his fellow congressmen on the other. Let's not forget that Obama's a smoker himself. I bet a lot of politicians, if not most, are fierce anti-smokers.
There are groups out there that think this is still a half-arsed bill and basically is a lame compromise to the tobacco industry to keep doing what they do best: make cigarettes. I bet those groups are the vast majority.
I'm actually surprised that this didn't go further, catering more to the anti-smoking lobby by for instance limiting the sales of tobacco products to special stores and banning them off petrol stations, grocery stores etc.
Anyway, I'm just saying that this decision is still fairly mild. Perhaps it's easy for me to say as those flavoured tobacco products are very very marginal over here in Europe as most smokers prefer their cigarettes to taste like cigarettes, errr... more or less like tobacco
