We refer to your recent B.C. newspaper ad campaign, which depicts the Canadian Cancer Society as coming to the rescue of "addicted" smokers with stop smoking programs (large type, rising sun graphic) and promises of "advocacy" and "activism with provincial and federal legislation" -- directed, of course, against those who choose NOT to quit.

Quintessential patronization, complete with guilt, carrot, stick, and redemption. And since when did the Canadian Cancer Society become a political movement? Your job is to support the search for a cure for cancer, cancer victims, and counsel cancer prevention. You should not become a political pressure group to try to force specific legislative programs. Stick with the smoking cessation programs -- and get out of the business of social engineering and trying to interfere with the liberties of individuals and businesses. It is time for the public put you back at your place.

But what is even more striking about this ad is the finely engineered distortion of facts: just enough said and omitted to instill subliminal messages and lead readers to erroneous (but unstated) conclusions sympathetic to the CCS position about smoking. Indeed, a textbook example of today's public opinion engineering techniques.

At this point, one thing should be made clear to CCS: as smokers we are not victims, the choice is ours, and many of us don't intend to quit! Moreover, there is no shame in smoking, but there is shame in persecuting a segment of the population that has made a choice of lifestyle. Thus, take your "buzz" word compassion and shove it.

Here's how the ad begins: (Click here to see the original photocopy)

SMOKERS, make a fresh start: A program designed to help smokers quit and stay quit. Group support. Coping skills. Confidence.

Nothing wrong with offering a smoking cessation program to the community (we'll pass no comment on the assumption that smokers need "confidence") -- but the ad doesn't leave it there.

Below is the text of the ad, with our comments.

"... Smoking has been identified as the most difficult addiction to quit compared to alcohol and hard drugs."

Identified by whom? The antismokers persecution machine? What credibility does that have? By the way, that's why millions have quit, and thousands are quitting. Some "drug" to get rid of! The comparison with hard drugs is a tired technique to make smokers feel like socially marginalized junkies -- cheap shot.

"...Nicotine and other chemicals in cigarettes cause a severe, demanding habit, one that costs thousands of lives in B.C. every year..."

... of which about 50% live well over 70, not to mention the diagnostic biases in smokers' lung cancer detection. If you smoke and have lung cancer it's tobacco for sure, while if you don't smoke and have lung cancer, it's secondhand smoke -- nothing else, of course.

And now, to the best part of the ad.

Human Health

"- Tobacco kills approximately three million people per year world-wide."
"- Tobacco kills twice as many British Colombians as accidents, suicides, murder, HIV/AIDS and drug use, combined."

Prove it beyond reasonable doubt, since you make the allegation. The problem here is the insistence of the antismoking lobby that every single smoker who dies from certain categories of disease is killed by tobacco, exclusively by tobacco, and nothing else but tobacco. The huge manipulation of statistics in this area is evident to the point of enraging serious, uncorrupted scientists around the world.

By the way, suicide and murder are not up high on the list when it comes to leading causes of death, so why compare smoking to them? Why choose HIV/AIDS and drug use, rather than, say, complications from diabetes? Or deaths from strokes and heart disease among non-smokers? Unless, of course, you are trying to create a link subliminally between smoking and notions of victimization, criminality and despair. Give us a break, folks!

"- Cigarettes are the leading cause of death from fire and second leading cause of fire related injury."

This may be true, but if you remove the cigarettes from the hands of the careless and the fools, they will find some other way to set things on fire. Smoking prohibition does not cure foolishness (as your statements prove). We can take further steps to eliminating deaths by fire if we make backyard barbecues, fireplaces, and the possession of matches and lighters by adults illegal.

Second hand smoke

"- There are more that 4,000 dangerous chemicals in second-hand smoke. Some like arsenic, benzene and asbestos are so dangerous that they have been banned from every workplace in all of Canada by the federal government."

You commit big sins of omission here -- calculated to create a sense of alarm in the reader. The Canadian Cancer Society conveniently forgets to say that the same chemicals are present in the exhaust of cars, as well as in the combustion of any fossil fuel for any purpose (barbecues included), except that the quantities are millions of times higher! How come don't you go after the automakers and the power utilities? Let's speculate: there is no money in it, yet!

"- In the U.S., it has been estimated that passive (second hand smoke) causes more cancer related deaths that all regulated industrial air pollutants combined."

You mean to tell people that an average population exposure of 0.1 grams per person per day causes more cancer than an average exposure of about 900 grams per person per day of the same pollutants? Give us a break! People are not as stupid as you make them.

The estimates, of course, probably come from grant-funded studies designed for anti-tobacco purposes and paid for by the taxes of U.S. smokers. We're not sure, however -- since you conveniently don't say who is doing the estimating and what it is based on. It should be useful for the reader to know that many of the tobacco tax - funded grants are available only to establish the dangerousness of second-hand smoke, and this is the expected result; sometimes, this is even a contractual condition. Thus, the more alarmistic the numbers, the more money available for further studies. By the way, what are the estimated health consequences of the tons of automotive pollution poured into the U.S. atmosphere each year?

At any rate, we would like to officially ask the CCS to specify to FORCES Canada the studies or comments on which this statement is based. Thanks in advance.

" - Children exposed to second-hand smoke have increased rates of coughing and wheezing, bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma, middle ear infection and reduced lung function."

This is based on statistics that have the bias against smoking (see above). We are sure that the CCS will have no problem in supplying the public with direct, measurable evidence (satisfying the basic scientific criteria that a phenomenon must be both quantifiable/verifiable, and consistently repeatable) that exposure to tobacco smoke causes the illnesses mentioned above. We are waiting, and so are our 10,000 readers. Differently than the antismoker fanatics, we are not basing our statements on biased assumptions, we just don't want to call you liars until we have hard proof.

"- Second-hand smoke contains polonium-210, which gives off alpha rays that are at least ten times more cancer causing than the normal radiation use in X-rays. Ventilation systems do not solve the problem of second-hand smoke. An average ventilation system takes more than one hour to remove 95% of the smoke from just one cigarette."

Now, this takes the prize! Is this incompetence, or just "creativity"?

Polonium-210 is an unstable isotope in the decay chain of naturally found uranium-238 into lead. Along the way, the uranium decays into a number of different elements. Before it decays into polonium (half-life 140 days), the original uranium decays into (among other elements) radium (half-life of 1,622 years) and radon (half-life of 3.825 days), and a number of other unstable (radioactive) elements that can last as short as 1/10,000 second. (Leighton, Robert B. "Principles of Modern Physics", McGraw-Hill, 1959, p. 516).

Now, here is the trump-card: ALL FOODS CONTAIN RADIUM. This comes from the trace amounts of the element uranium, which is naturally found in minerals all over the world, therefore, entering -- in tiny amounts -- into the plants that are grown in the soil -- and tobacco is only one of these plants. And, guess what else you'll find in food -- other radioactive elements as well.

So, when you fanatics scream about radioactive tobacco smoke, you are hiding the fact (or are ignorant of it) that most of these radioactive elements are also found in every plant. We live in a soup of trace radioactivity, in the air (e.g. radioactive Carbon-14) and water as well.

You know how scientists date old stuff -- organic or mineral? They do it by looking at the radioactive material in it, because the half-lives of the radioactive elements are known.

The same misleading scaremongering goes on about the carcinogens in tobacco smoke. Carcinogens are naturally found all over the place. But this is a well-kept secret from the commoners by the antismoking gang.

If you're down to trying to get people upset about Polonium-210, you are really running out of arguments, Canadian Cancer Society. You better stick with the political arrogance and prevarication you have grown to be accustomed to in recent years with the help of our beloved government, obviously a bird of the feathers. Once again, the logic of your arguments should move you to campaigns and advocacy against cars and wood-burning fireplaces.

Good ventilation systems are more than adequate to remove smoke, unless you measure the levels with instrumentation capable of measuring nanograms, and nanograms hurt no one.

"- In 1994, more than 55 billion cigarettes, over 155 million cigars, and 200 tonnes of pipe tobacco were smoked in Canada. Health Canada estimates that these products generated over 960 tonnes of environmental tar annually in environmental tobacco smoke (second hand smoke)."

... and all those cigarettes have made billions in revenue for government and society. But for a change, we have something closer to the truth, at least in those numbers. Expressed in those terms, it even sounds impressive -- good job, folks.

However, this means 0.1 grams per person per day. How do we compare this with the 890 grams (nearly two pounds) per person per day of environmental pollution (Tar, Carbon Monoxide, Nitrogen Oxide, Benzene, Arsenic, etc.) in all major urban areas? This mounts to 8,616,920 tons per year in Canada and 58,000,000 tons in North America.

Emissions from cigarettes are a tiny drop in a huge ocean of pollution. By attempting to paint second hand cigarette smoke as a major air pollution problem, you earn the title of Master of Mislead. Aren't you ashamed? We have to concede, however, that it must be hard to make a living going through the day spin-doctoring information, even if the money must be darn good.

We would also like to take this opportunity to ask the CCS to provide us with statements on the nature of their own funding, in order to dissipate any doubt on how much of their budget is supported by a government that expects only one result.

FORCES Canada