FDA urges people to “smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em”

SILVER SPRING, Md. – The Federal Food and Drug Administration has issued new guidance in relation to tobacco smoking in light of all the chaos engulfing the United States since Donald Trump returned to the White House on Jan. 20th.

The new “smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em” campaign drastically pulls back on the agency’s long stance that tobacco products, especially those that contain nicotine, are bad for your health and encourages everyone to “do what you need to relieve the stress.”

“Fuck it,” said Robert M. Califf, commissioner of the FDA. “Cigarettes are still bad for you, obviously, but the way this shit show is going, we’re all more likely to die in hospital waiting rooms long before the cancer even starts to develop.”

Califf attributed the FDA’s decision on the government’s current mission to slash Medicare and Medicaid services to pay for billionaire tax cuts, gutting the public health workforce, and eliminating life-saving medical research.

“You might as well start investing in leeches again,” said Califf. “If I were a betting man, I would say this void in the public health space is going to be rapidly filled with snake oil salesmen looking to make a quick buck on your medical misfortune.”

Republican lawmakers have pushed back against this “left-wing fearmongering” about cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, insisting there’s absolutely no verbiage in the current budget resolution that explicitly states those cuts.

This argument has some glaring holes in it, however. For example, while it doesn’t make any explicit cuts to Medicare, it does require certain committees to slash their budgets. The Energy and Commerce committee, for example, would be required to cut $880 billion from its budget.

What’s the big deal about that? We like cutting government spending, right? Well, the Energy and Commerce committee is the group that oversees Medicare and there’s absolutely no way it can cut that much money from the budget without dismembering Medicare and Medicaid.

*Using my best Price is Right announcer voice* but that’s not all! These cuts will also dramatically affect the committee that handles food stamps and other programs to help low-income families with food insecurity. And, as you can imagine, cutting off people’s access to food will degrade their health.

“If we’ve learned anything over the first month of President Trump’s second term in office, it’s that he doesn’t give a single flying fuck about any of us,” said Donna Porter, a mother of four. “It’s disgusting seeing how he is driving our nation towards an autocratic nightmare and the brainwashed sheep on the right are cheering it on. It’s sickening.”

With one month down, there’s only 47 more months of a Trump presidency (unless his cronies in Congress actually pass legislation to amend the Constitution to allow him to run for a third term). So, kick your feet up, watch the world burn, and smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em.