Cigarettes Don't Kill People. . .

Consider this sentence:

"The legislation, which the White House said President Obama would sign as soon as it reached his desk, will enable the Food and Drug Administration to impose potentially strict new controls on the making and marketing of products that eventually kill half their regular users." (Emphasis added.)

(From "Senate Approves Tight Regulation Over Cigarettes" [A1, upper right corner])

This is not a comment on the legislation.  For the record, the Solipsist is no fan of smoking or the tobacco industry, and Sloppists, of course, are welcome to leave their two cents on the new FDA rules in the comment section.  Here, however, we are interested in sentence structure and editorializing in news articles.

For you non-grammar enthusiasts (as if anyone could not be enthusiastic about grammar!), the highlighted part in the sentence above is called a relative (or adjective) clause.  Usually beginning with 'that,' 'which,' or some variation of 'who,' these clauses add information to a sentence in the same way as single-word adjectives do.

Here's the thing about relative clauses: They are not grammatically necessary.  In other words, the sentence could have ended after the word 'products' and still been a complete sentence.  True, it would have felt incomplete: ". . . will enable the Food and Drug Administration to impose potentially strict new controls on the making and marketing of products."  What "products"?  Doesn't the FDA already have the authority to impose controls on "making and marketing" of products?  So some modification, for the sake of clarity, is required.

OK, why not just say "tobacco products," then, and leave it at that?  And here's where we get some none-too-subtle editorializing.  The writer (and editor) chose to modify the word "products" with a restrictive relative clause, signaling that the information contained in the clause is vital to the meaning of the sentence.  (FYI, when describing things--as opposed to people--restrictive clauses usually begin with 'that,' and non-restrictive clauses begin with 'which').  And what is this crucial modification?  The verbal phrase "eventually kill half their regular users."

Not "that pose major health concerns."  Not "that have been linked to cancer and other fatal illnesses."  Not even "that are often lethal to regular smokers."

". . .that eventually kill half their regular users."

Even as a non-smoker who would just as soon see cigarettes disappear, the Solipsist finds this phrasing jarring and extreme, particularly in the second paragraph of a news article.  To paraphrase (reluctantly) the gun lobby: Cigarettes don't kill people; smoking them does.  And actually, smoking cigarettes doesn't "kill" people, either: It often leads to debilitating and/or fatal illnesses, but this is not the same thing as "killing."  To this writer anyway, the word 'kill' suggests either a volitional act on the part of an actor ("John killed Fred") or a sudden death under violent circumstances ("John was killed when his car crashed into a tree.")  Unless a cigarette somehow develops consciousness, and/or someone dies when a cigarette spontaneously bursts into an enormous fireball, a cigarette has never "killed" anyone.

(Digression: To say nothing of the fact that we find the claim questionable: While the article doesn't explain "regular users"--pack a day?  Two packs?  A carton?--we cannot help but say, "Wait.  Do 50% of people who smoke actually die directly from smoking-related illnesses?"  We'd love to see some back-up of that.  EOD)

Semantics?  Well, yes and no.  Words matter.  And in a newspaper, where there should be a clear distinction between news reports and editorials/opinion pieces, there is no need for this kind of pedantry on the news side.  The reporter's/editor's viewpoint comes through clearly in this sentence.  But blatant pontification in what should be an objective piece often serves only to alienate the people you most want to convince.