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November 30 -
Big drugs goes after drinkers -
They
were uncorking the champagne at something called HBSA, Inc. a few
years ago when it received a big grant from the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, the multi-billion "health" foundation that heavily funds
anti-tobacco activities. The foundation, set up with billions
of dollars in pharmaceutical stock, bestowed its grant upon HBSA for
it to devise strategies to litigate the alcohol industry as the
tobacco industry had been litigated. As can be seen by project
details the shakedown of the tobacco industry and its customers is
the blueprint the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will use to
shakedown the alcohol industry.
The principle investigator for this
particular grant is one
James Mosher.
We are pleased to link to a brief bio of this booze-buster.
Too often the faces and background of those who grow rich scheming
to transfer money from private citizens (consumers) to governments
and so-called health organizations are obscure. Read about Mr.
Mosher and ask yourself whether you want him to set government
policy.
November 28
-
State inspired violence -
Oakland
California is abuzz over two violent assaults on liquor stores last
week. In both instances black men, dressed in dark suits and
bow ties, entered the stores, then, wielding metal rods, smashed
bottles of alcohol lining the shelves. News reports note that
in both cases the assailants berated the manager for selling liquor
to black people. KTVU reports that the thugs told the sales
clerks to "stop
poisoning our neighborhoods."
While no one was seriously hurt one clerk was jumped upon and
punched.
As of yet no suspects for the melees
have been apprehended but the rampage was caught on video so law
enforcement is confident that the assailants will be found. In
a follow-up in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle addressed one of
the rumors that are flying about by reporting that the Nation of
Islam, a large black Muslim religion in the Bay Area, strongly
denounced the assaults upon the liquor stores. The West Coast
leader of the Nation of Islam helped
provide a context for the violence
by
asserting, "Our job is to kill the appetite
(for alcohol) in the black community."
Oakland and more recently San Francisco have been
ramping up the anti-alcohol rhetoric. In San Francisco
legislation has been proposed that would
crack down,
not
on the drunks that ruin neighborhoods, but on the corner store
proprietors who lawfully sell a legal product. This playbook
was perfected by anti-tobacco, whose drumbeat of anti-tobacco
rhetoric has placed smokers in the crosshairs of violence.
Years ago one so-called progressive member of city hall accused
corner store proprietors poisoning their customers by selling
cigarettes. From slandering smokers and shop owners who sell
cigarettes its a very short path to encouraging violence against
stores that "poison" neighborhoods by selling alcohol. No
matter what was the real motive for the liquor store vandalism, the
politicians who maintain power by inspiring hatred against targeted
citizens provided the justification for the violence unleashed.
November
18
-
Cracking down on beer - Fed up with mountains of litter and
drunks urinating in the streets, a Chicago politicians is proposing
that the lawless be controlled by banning a selected types of
alcohol.
No one argues that cities don't have
the right and the duty, to ensure their streets are safe and clean
but rather than crack down on the public drunks and troublemakers,
which is what the residents want, cowardly politicians look for
cheap publicity by blaming the problem on the booze the rotters
prefer. Eliminating malt liquor will never deter a drunk from
overindulging on something else but it will eliminate a choice for
the law-abiding.
October 14
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Ephemeral links -
Burnishing
his résumé in the hopes of getting a fast track onto the upcoming
anti-alcohol gravy train a researcher has found that "significant"
consumption of alcohol increases the risk of colorectal cancer.
While his definition of "significant" is laughably skimpy at eight
drinks per week, more significant is the exclusion of one type of
alcohol, coincidentally the one that the researcher drinks.
Red wine, according to this study, does not lead to colorectal
cancer but actually leads to improved health, a miracle that, of
course, the researcher painstakingly attempts to explain.
Needless to say the cancer risk he unearthed caused by the alcohol
he disapproves of is not statistically significant. We give
him a A- for creativity and a D- for epidemiological sleight of
hand.
June 6 -
Lie down with dogs,
arise with fleas - It can be argued that at one time Mothers
Against Drunk Driving served a public good. Through the work
of this organization the laws against driving while intoxicated were
toughened and enforced. Since MADD hit the lobbying scene the
number of Driving Under the Influence violations have declined
nationwide. Once its mission
was accomplished MADD morphed into a perpetual money-raising
organization that needed something to justify its existence.
MADD has become a neo-prohibition organization whose agenda is more
closely related to ending drinking completely than to correcting lax
enforcement of important life-saving laws.
The quickest path to mega-millions in
donations is to work the corporate rackets, as does anti-smoking
groups with the pharmaceutical industry. MADD recently teamed
up with General Motors, gaining big bucks and a corporate megaphone
to preach the abstinence doctrine. The American Beverage
Licensees is concerned that MADD's increasingly intrusive forays
into personal choice and adult behavior has launched an information
campaign to inform the public and policy makers about the real
agenda of MADD and its corporate sponsors.
May 3 -
Giving up on the junk scienceA
story from the notoriously anti-smoking Toledo Blade announces a
plan by anti-tobacco to buy smoking ban legislation through a voter
initiative. What's interesting in this puff piece is
the absence
of any health justification for the smoking ban.
So flimsy is the pretext that banning smoking is good for health
that even the tobacco control industry is reluctant to bring it up.May 2
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Party Poopers -
A
popular Cinco de Mayo party will not be happening this year in the
Kentucky city that symbolizes prohibition. First the killjoys
in Lexington banned smoking in bars and now they insist that the Cinco de Mayo festivities at a popular bar be terminated by
midnight.
The owner of the bar reluctantly cancelled her event
since closing at such an early hour would be a money-loser rather
than the money-maker it had been for the past several years.
As Puritanism advances the good times die out. March 18 -
Approaching
the cliff -
The news media is agog over the steroids scandal while Congress
inserts itself into what is basically a pro sports issue. From
San Francisco, home base for the most intrusive nanny brigade, comes
an indignant voice demanding that action be taken against....alcohol
glorification in sports. Joan
Ryan, who once seriously proposed that tobacco be made illegal,
modifies her anti-tobacco talking points replacing
"smoking" and "cigarettes" with
"drinking" and "alcohol." Everything
remains the same. Aggressive advertising, payoffs from Big
Alcohol to universities and sinister machinations from predatory
corporations to derail "sensible" regulations designed to
protect the children. All this, as well as mind numbing
statistics chronicling the epidemic of death and destruction
unleashed upon the nation. Joan is a one track song of
prohibition that has been heard before and unfortunately seems
impossible to stifle.
March 15 -
'Youth'
drinking leads to heart trouble -
We include the scare quotes in the title because nowhere in this
unfocused article is youth defined. We assume it includes people
over 21 years of age all the way up to 33, based on the age range of
one of the studies cited. What is clear, however, is that this
study was released to form part of the foundation being erected to
move forward to Alcohol Prohibition, The Sequel.
The thrust appears to center on how
"youths" who drink "even a little alcohol" may
be triggering early heart disease. The evidence isn't
persuasive, which is usual for studies such as
these. Of more importance is the chilly theory that drinking
alcohol is justified only if it has some sort of health
benefit. Since only the middle aged benefit from alcohol only
they should so indulge. Puritanism mixed with health
fanaticism, a potent brew hazardous to all our health.
February
28 -
Taking
a stand against prohibition -
Mothers Against Drunk Drivers is a good example of a pressure group
that, after attaining all its goals, expands its scope grotesquely to
keep the funding stream flowing. Devolving from advocating
enforcement of drunk driving laws to advocating de facto alcohol
prohibition, MADD is now one more creature of the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation, a pharmaceutical lobbying group headquartered in Princeton,
New Jersey.
In
addition to drug money, MADD collects donations from American businesses
that buy positive PR by contributing to the most fashionable causes
du jour. General Motors now is feeling the heat as its
five-year financial commitment to MADD draws to an end and a national
effort by 17,000 bars is launched to dissuade the auto-maker
from renewing its funding.
"We
want to stop GM from contributing to MADD. We have a problem with GM
money going to criminalize social drinkers. GM needs to recognize it
is attacking legitimate businesses," said Rick Berman, the
high-powered Washington, D.C., lobbyist running the MADDatGM campaign.
Such an
effort is long overdue. These days MADD, despite is protestations
to the contrary, is in the forefront of the prohibition of alcohol
movement, inspired by anti-smoking prohibition. For instance MADD
has:
Launched a
new campaign to require all separation agreements and divorce decrees to
require a provision “that prohibits either parent from drinking and
driving … with minor children in the vehicle.” The
penalty for doing so, according to MADD, should include:
-
Suspension
of driver’s license”
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Change
of primary custody of the children”
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Termination
of parental rights” or
-
“Incarceration
for violation of the terms of the divorce decree”
If MADD
gets its way, a mother who drives her children safely home after having
a glass of wine with dinner in a restaurant would risk losing her
license, her children, her freedom, and her legal standing as a mother.
February 21 -
Expectant mums were given conflicting advice yesterday about
the risks of drinking alcohol during pregnancy.
Austrian government guidelines say there is no evidence of a "measurable
impact on the physical and mental development" of a child if a pregnant woman
averages one drink a day.
It was not clear that alcoholic mums-to-be would have damaged babies – one
study found that just 7 per cent of alcoholic mothers had children with FAS.
February 15 -
Moving
along to alcohol -
Even though the World Health Organization international tobacco treaty
hasn't yet gone into effect, the prohibitionists are moving on to deal
with the "crisis" of alcohol abuse. As Steve
Milloy notes, the pattern used to demonize tobacco and persecute
smokers, is being used to set up a shakedown of the alcohol industry and
marginalize those who enjoy adult beverages.
Beyond that Milloy lets the international
grifters debunk their own phony death statistics by interpreting their
glib jargon, showing that these charlatans have so rigged the game the same death can, at will, be
attributed (entirely) to anything the attributers want to attribute it to.
February 7
-
Alcohol 'as
harmful as smoking' - As per World Health Organization script, the
march against alcohol goes on. The drinkers’ market represents a huge
potential for antidepressants and a myriad of other “therapies” to quit. We
all know that in this social conditioning process the role of junk science
is essential for "public health" in order not to pass as prohibitionist and
state that it proceeds only from scientific bases. Thus, here comes
this study from the University of Stockholm. Alcohol is as harmful as
smoking and “causes” the same number of deaths and diseases, it says. Then
here comes what cannot possibly be computed, thus demonstrated: the
social costs. In this area alcohol tails closely tobacco with 4% of the
social costs vs. 4.1% of tobacco. On the base of this pure speculation, the
junk scientists turn into politicians and severely criticise UK’s new law
to make alcohol available 24 hours a day. Of course they advocate alcohol
taxes, and turn into Nostradamus predicting that a 10% tax increase would
“cause” a 7% fall of deaths for cirrhosis in men and 8.3% in women -
please note the decimal point precision!
After
that, what is the mandatory icing on the cake? Cancer, of course!
Alcohol “causes” cancer of the mouth, liver and
breast, as well as heart disease and stroke. As long as there is death,
there will always be fertile grounds for junk science scares.
These
jokers should shut up and start proving what they say instead of
entering trash and speculations in computers, press the “enter” key and get
trash out. Unfortunately, this electronified numerology pays back good
money and political power. This proves two things: that hysteria and conman
ship is the way to go today, and that, except for a few too short
decades, we really never got out of medieval superstitions - at least, not
in the head.
January 26 -
Extremism - Common
sense and moderation are lost concepts in the United States. After
several decades preaching tobacco zero tolerance -- one cigarette you
are hooked and you will die -- the medical profession finds itself in an
"all or nothing" world where particular foods and drinks are
regarded as killers. No red meat, no shell fish, no cocktails.
Ignore the dicta and death is the result. We've
all heard the stories of officious waiters refusing to serve pregnant
women glasses of wine but these days the pregnant women have been so
brainwashed that it is a brave woman indeed who would dare order a
cocktail or even a beer when pregnant. For
today's health dictators a glass of wine is the same as drinking a quart of
vodka. Smoking a pack of cigarettes in a 24-hour period is the same as
chain smoking. Eating a burger is the same as gorging at a gluttonous
Roman banquet. This
interview with a medical historian traces the advance of the
anti-alcohol advocates whose success at pushing zero tolerance is
sobering. The historian is ambivalent about the panic over alcohol
and pregnancy but is realistic enough to lay out a grim reality:
In a litigious society, one that is committed to banishing all
risk, then you have take a position against all drinking.
January 10 -
Exasperating
the blue noses - In these increasingly oppressive times
its rare to find something to cheer. As the behavioral engineers move
from anti-tobacco to anti-alcohol an entrepreneur caters to the innate
rebelliousness of people who recognize that the do-gooders are, as always,
up to no good. A cocktail imbiber and unabashed smoker is making is
mark by singing the praises of alcohol and the lubricity it promotes in a
monthly magazine called Modern Drunkard.
"The most accomplished people have
been drinkers. Hemingway was a great literary drunk, and I think a lot of
teetotalers would trade their lives for his in a second," he said.
"Alcohol is the great socializer. Can you imagine a world without it?
Well, I guess you can -- it's called the Middle East."
Such sentiments are a red flag for
neo-prohibitionists such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving who call Modern
Drunkard dangerous. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse, an
organization that has decreed one drink a day "moderate", is
"appalled." With endorsements like these Modern Drunkard is
in for a long and profitable run.
January 10 -
Fingering
the drinkers - Responding to what it calls "hidden epidemic" of alcoholism
among the elderly, Medicare is initiating introductory physicals that
concentrate on prevention. There's just too much smoking and drinking
going on by our senior citizens and something must be done to stop it.
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