Not only that, during his previous tenure as deputy health minister more than two years ago, Rabbi Yaakov Litzman opposed the requirement that cigarette packs carry photos of dirty lungs and teeth to discourage children and youth from smoking, arguing that such illustrations were “not aesthetic.”
Above: Rabbi Yaakov Litzman
The Jerusalem Post reports:
Deputy Health Minister [this is a legal fiction employed, illegally according to the High Court of Justice, to allow Ashkenazi haredi Members of Knesset to hold ministerial positions without having to have the responsibility of voting on national security issues in the cabinet – FailedMessiah.com] MK [Rabbi] Ya’acov [sp; should be Yaakov] Litzman opposes broad legislation to prohibit tobacco advertising in newspapers, but has agreed to “limiting” such ads, including the requirement of placing anti-smoking ads in the same newspapers that publish tobacco ads. He spoke at Monday’s session on no-smoking law enforcement at the Knesset Labor, Social Welfare and Health Committee.
Litzman, a Gur hassid, is known to be closely associated with Hamodia, the ultra-Orthodox daily affiliated with Gur hassidim and his Agudat Yisrael party [i.e., the hasidic faction of the United Torah Judaism Party – FailedMessiah.com] that publishes many tobacco ads in a “religious” context.
During his previous tenure as deputy health minister more than two years ago, he came out in opposition to the requirement that cigarette packs carry photos of dirty lungs and teeth to discourage children and youth from smoking, arguing that such illustrations were “not aesthetic.”
Litzman’s [immediate] predecessor, Yesh Atid MK and former health minister Ya'el German, pointed out that the smoking rates in countries that prohibited tobacco advertising in all newspaper dropped quickly by an average of nine percent. She added that such “because of a huge and illegitimate lobby of newspapers and those affiliated with them, the bill to prohibit such ads did not pass in the previous Knesset.”
Litzman responded: “But now I am in this job, and not you!”…