Statues with Health Warnings?

Today in Devon, England, they unveiled a statue of Sir Walter Raleigh. The chap was an adventurer who sailed the seas in Elizabethan times. He plundered from the Spanish, which pleased Queen Elizabeth who was always looking for ways to get one over on the Spaniards. He sailed to the New World and was instrumental in introducing potatoes and tobacco to this country.
The statue cost £30,000 to make. It shows a swashbuckling figure in Elizabethan garb. A truly noble tribute to one of the heroes of English history who helped open up the New World and thus instigated the American nation we know today. The statue was paid for by - wait for it - British American Tobacco Corporation. Shrieks of anger! Calls for the statue to be torn down! How dare they, these people who make profit from people's addictions and the resultant death toll!
Tobacco is, no doubt, a curse on mankind. Raleigh and others saw the native Americans using it both as a narcotic and as a ritual sign for peace - hence the "pipe of peace". He didn't know about the health hazards. The locals didn't put health warnings on their pipes. So today, in the knowledge of the true cost of smoking, some people are castigating him. They are saying that the statue should not have been put up - mainly because it was financed by what is now seen as an ogre bent on causing pain and suffering to mankind in the name of profit.
Bollocks!
Balderdash!
People are also of the opinion that chips - "fries" to you Americans - are also bad for you because of the fat content. If the British potato growers had financed the statue would there have been an outcry? I think not, although the way that establishments like McDonalds have abused the humble potato poses the question "should we entrust the development of the potato to the Americans - they only bugger it up".
Sir Walter Raleigh was a figure of historical interest. He was one of the people who furthered the curiosity of mankind and helped to explore the world in which we live. Statues of other explorers of that time litter many countries in both the Old World and the New. His life and actions were part of the forming of present-day America with its diversity of origins, including people from pretty-well all over the world.
He was, in fact, one of the true founders of the present USA.
The city where I live, Bristol, thrived on trading mainly in tobacco and slaves. Its history is inexorably linked to the formation and expansion of the US. For much of the period from Elizabethan times until the mid-20th century Bristol was one of the most important links between Europe, Africa and the New World because of this trade.
In the light of what we know today, if tobacco was only discovered within the last 50 years it would have been banned immediately as a narcotic along with heroin, cocaine and all the other hard, addictive drugs. But in Sir Walter's time we did not have that knowledge.
Please, all you do-gooders, have a sense of perspective. Look on the time of Sir Walter and his like as a time of learning about the world. In his time there were still many who believed the world was flat and ended in the middle of the Atlantic. Sir Walter and other more intrepid explorers gave us knowledge. How we used, it and sometimes abused it, is not down to him.
Some may even castigate him for helping to start the American nation.
Now there's a thought.
Nuff said.