September 25 - Yesterday we reported a tragic Orlando Sentinel story about a 13 year old New Smyrna Beach, Florida boy who was beaten to death by an older adolescent, because his attacker mistakenly believed that he had given cigarettes to the assailant's younger brother.

Five years ago we published three commentaries by Norman Kjono that documented assaults on persons who smoke: November 17, 1997 "Anti-Tobacco Violence;" December 6, 1997 "Modem Madness;" and January 16 1998 "Anti-Tobacco Violence Update." Today, as we contemplate the violent tobacco-related death of a 13 year old, Mr. Kjono's observation from "Anti-Tobacco Violence Update" haunt us:

"We cannot promote intolerance of "Target Groups" as a society, and as a matter of government policy, without ultimately getting the violence that goes along with it. If anti-tobacco promotes intolerance of smokers, as the written record of Project ASSIST materials and contracts makes explicitly clear that anti-tobacco does, then we must accept that we will ultimately have violence against persons who smoke. If one buys into intolerance, they also buy into violence."

Considering the horrible events in New Smyrna Beach we publish again Mr. Kjono's three anti-tobacco violence commentaries form 1997. Included with commentary text is also an update to the final disposition of Mr. Kjono's October 1997 complaint filed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Action on Smoking and Health's promotion of a book that contains what the author describes as a tested and proven plan to inject cyanide into cigarettes for the express purpose of killing persons who smoke. Supplements included with that posting provide the full text of the ASH promotion, ASH's direct involvement with influencing school children's behavior, follow-up with then Attorney General Reno, and complete text of the FBI's response to Mr. Kjono's complaint as written April 4, 2000 to U.S. Senator Slade Gorton.

We believe that our readers will find the FBI's investigative conclusions about special-interest activists promoting a tested and proven plan to use a weapon of mass destruction on designated US consumers to be chilling.

Stay tuned on this issue. We will be reporting more in the near future.

September 25 - Airlines Refuse To Wise Up - The nation's big airlines are preparing to ask the federal government for a new round of emergency financial help, as the industry deteriorates further amid weak passenger traffic and rising fuel costs, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.  The spring and summer travel seasons were a big disappointment for major carriers. Early signs that revenue was gradually recovering in the months after last September's terrorist attacks stalled in March, as the fragile economy and airport-security hassles deterred passengers.

The airlines are going begging to the federal government for some financial help.  Granted, the horrific events of September 11, 2001 put a big damper on air travel but instead of flinging their arms wide in an effort to welcome all people back on board, the airlines are still neglecting the quarter of the population that smokes.

Smokers stopped flying in droves when the airlines, cooperating with government bureaucrats, banned smoking, first on short flights, then on long flights and, finally, on all flights, including those that last 15 hours or more.  A cattle-car cabin is bad enough without the smoking ban making it a torture chamber.  The Department of Transportation, despite its best efforts, was unable to produce a valid reason for banning smoking in the first place yet as it begs people to fly, the airlines refuse to cater to a major segment of the population.

If resuming smoking on airlines is too daring for these corporate geniuses, then the airlines should at least lean on all the airports and demand that smoking sections be mandated at all terminals.  A two-hour smoke-free flight is two hours too long but, as any traveler knows these days, a two-hour flight is preceded by a one to two hour stay in the airport terminal.  Smokers are not putting up with prohibition.  They are voting their displeasure with reduced airline travel expenditures.  The government should refuse to bail out the airlines.  Let them go broke and be replaced by people whose motto is "the customer is always right."

September 25 - The Sky's The Limit! - On the other side will be anti-smoking crusaders, including city Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, who said secondhand smoke kills up to 11,000 New Yorkers every year.  "Call me naive, but I really do think that telling people the truth works," said Frieden, who has prepared an 18-page briefing book on secondhand smoking for City Council members.

Thomas Frieden

Call us naive, but the public expects the head of New York City's health department to know upon what planet he is planted.  So secondhand smoke kills 11,000, Commissioner Frieden?  Let's see, New York City contains a bit less than three percent (.028) of the population of the United States.  Using the statistic Frieden made up, a bit over one tenth of one percent (.0014) of New Yorkers are killed each year by secondhand smoke.  Extrapolate that to the population of the United States and Frieden is asking his employers, the citizens of New York, to believe that 397,600 Americans are killed by secondhand smoke each year.  That's nearly the amount that is "killed" by smoking tobacco first hand and well over one hundred times the estimate of secondhand smoke deaths that the Environmental Protection Agency fraudulently claimed.  

The EPA's estimate of 3,000 was vacated, invalidated, ruled a fraud by a federal judge four years ago, as Health Commissioner Frieden should know.  He must be pulling his secondhand death figure out of a hat.  He certainly isn't getting it from any official government source since the only position the United States government can take regarding secondhand smoke is that it is not a health hazard.  Frieden is either a fool or a lying demagogue and health bureaucrats don't get to head up major city health departments by being a fool.  He certainly needs to freshen up on the Hippocratic Oath he once took.

The rest of this fairly upbeat article deals with the real New Yorkers who oppose Mayor Bloomberg's plan to turn New York into Santa Monica.  They don't buy Frieden's bull and they are not going to sit through this assault on freedom in silence.

September 24 - Got What You Wanted, Matt? - Matt Myers is Executive Vice President and General Counsel of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, a Washington based anti-tobacco lobbying group.  His organization is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, one of the top ten philanthropies in the United States.  As the largest single shareholder in drug  

Matt Myers Anti-tobacco education lobbyist

company Johnson & Johnson (72,000,000 shares), RWJF has plenty of clout and  aggressively supports developing a market for "Smoke Free" nicotine products.  RWJF promotes smoking bans since every restaurant, public building, or workplace that becomes "Smoke Free" is a new market for "Tobacco Free" nicotine products.  Matt Myers' outfit is the cog in RWJF that deals with children.  In the past few years pharmaceutical nicotine has made inroads into the child market.  The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids preaches that tobacco is addicting, the most addictive substance on earth, in fact, far worse that heroine and cocaine.  How to quit smoking?  Pharmaceutical nicotine, preferably that distributed by Johnson & Johnson.

Myers travels throughout the country visiting sympathetic media types presenting the case for universal tobacco education for the young.  This summer his theme was that the states are squandering the billions showered on them by the so-called tobacco settlement.  Not nearly enough was being spent on anti-tobacco education.  From an ABC news report in July, Myers excoriated the politicians for cutting back or refusing to fund Myers' pet programs.

"The states' failure to live up to their promise to use these funds to actually protect our children is unconscionable.  States that have decided to divert those funds already are seeing increased smoking rates among children."

Last Friday Myers' anti-tobacco program cost a 13-year-old boy his life.  Believing that the younger boy was supplying cigarettes to his younger brother, a 15-year-old boy beat and killed Shane Farrell of New Smyrna Beach, Florida.  The beating occurred before a horrified group of children.

571,639 kids have become regular smokers in 2002.  190,546 will die prematurely from their addiction.

The above is trumpeted by Myers on his organization's site.  The public schools in Florida proclaim the same unverifiable statistics, although most often the figure is anywhere from 3,000 to 6,000 kids begin smoking each day and one third will die from smoking.  Whatever made-up number is used the message is clear.  Kids who smoke will die.  That most smokers die in the 70's and 80's is not part of the message.

A 15-year-old boy has been told by his teachers that smoking will kill kids.  He thinks his brother is being given cigarettes by a boy.  The younger kid is killing his younger brother.  Older brothers are protective.  That's their job.  He eliminated the supply.

The lies and hatred that Matt Myers and his cohorts are spreading from coast to coast, border to border, are deadly.  The anti-tobacco education he touts is murderous.  Smoking has not killed one child but anti-tobacco education has killed quite a few.  New Smyrna Beach just found out that hard fact.

September 24 - PM Files Suit Against Online Cigarette Sellers - Philip Morris Cos. (MO) filed unfair-competition lawsuits against certain Internet cigarette sellers, alleging the defendants are violating the company's trademarks.  The eight suits, filed in U.S. District Courts in California and New York, allege the defendants are violating federal and state laws by misusing Philip Morris' trademarks to attract Internet users to their Web sites, the tobacco company said Monday.

It's product can be slandered, its profits stolen, its customers persecuted and reviled, but don't muscle in on its monopoly.  Philip Morris is miffed that online vendors are offering cigarettes at a better price and financially-strapped smokers are snapping them up.  The company is using trademark violation and, of all things, age verification concerns to prop up its case.  It also is playing good citizen by worrying that some of the sales may bypass excise taxes.  Well, duh!  If PM offered its product at a reasonable price, the online vendors would evaporate.  PM is as foolish as the governments that hope to make a killing jacking up the price of a pack of cigarettes to astronomical heights.  People will not pay for overpriced goods.  They never have and the never will.

September 23 - Doctor fights pharmacies over cigarette sales - Over in New Jersey, a couple of whiny, self-important medicos are trying to pressure local pharmacies into dropping the sales of cigarettes. "Why should you be able to get your chemotherapy medicines in the same place you can get a cancer-causing agent?" wails one. Why, following the same line of “reasoning,” should you be able to pick up your copy of Atlantic magazine or Foreign Affairs at the same newsstand where they sell Soap Opera Digest and Hustler?  Or House Beautiful? ‘cause people want ‘em all, stupid!

We can’t help noticing how the doc’s unthinking faith in his own profession is reflected in his spontaneous contrast of tobacco with chemotherapy drugs, as if the former were an automatic death sentence and the latter a toxin-free new lease on life. The fact is:  medical science has largely failed in its battle against cancer, and that’s one of the reasons why docs like the ones in this article are hassling local pharmacies, crying wolf over cellular phone use, captaining pricey behaviour control PR strategies and getting knotted up in hopelessly misleading statistics.

September 23 - Nicotine Vaccine Could Help Smokers Quit - You can bet on it. There’ll be plenty of touchingly trusting souls among the American public who’ll offer up their children as prospective lab rats for this one – a revolutionary anti-smoking therapy-and-vaccine-in-one that will soak up all that nasty nicotine before it reaches the brain! The nicotine vaccine,  “now being tested, is offering hope to parents, “ this recent article prattles, as if the potential of a teenager’s taking up smoking is self-evidently a source of anxiety on par with his being afflicted with something like, AIDS, Muscular Dystrophy or Leukemia. So enthusiastic is the government about this new source of potential “hope” for the imaginary hopeless that it is investing in the project:. “…Stopping teen smoking is a top priority of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. That's why it's paying for clinical safety trials of the vaccine, “ we’re told. And what of the mounting evidence that nicotine has disease-fighting potential (see Smoke One For Mental Health)? Will teens subjected to biochemical manipulation today be unable to avail themselves of useful medicine in the future?

Other questions: will nicotine vaccines become compulsory? (Surely, denying “hope” to young potential smokers is a kind of child abuse, isn’t it?) Will this “vaccine” pave the way for more behaviour control tinkering that will be presented as miraculous must-haves for growing youngsters? One thing is certain: the trendies of today’s health establishment would rather fudge the tough ethical issues as they push their programs – and leave courts in the future to sort out the resulting mess.

September 23 - Some Experts Fear Political Influence on Crime Data Agencies - Whether it has to do with smoking or rates of assault, those who control the numbers control the world – the world of public perception, that is. This New York Times article (free registration required) may seem like just another report on the usual Democrat-Republican infighting. But those who are doing the squabbling explicitly recognize the importance of official numbers as a key to effective public propaganda: “Criminal justice experts say they have become increasingly concerned that the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft is moving to exert political control over previously independent agencies within the department that collect crime statistics and grant crime research awards. At stake, they say, is the integrity of statistics about whether crime is increasing or decreasing and the findings of scholars about what causes crime and how to reduce it.”

If the cynical manipulation of statistics has become a topic of serious concern in the fields of health and public policy, it’s not surprising to learn that similar concerns are being raised elsewhere. Call it Fear of Fudging – a healthy scepticism to have in the so-called information age.

September 20 - Anti-Tobacco Pressure Group Gives Itself An A Plus - How much credence would the press give to a tobacco company upon the release of a study it conducted showing that its anti-smoking efforts directed at teenagers was a huge success?  Absolutely zero.  That's exactly how much credence should be given the American Legacy Foundation's latest study that purports to show its asinine anti-smoking ads have reduced youth smoking.  

Cheryl Healton patting herself on the back

Sarcastically dubbed the "truth" campaign, the ads are a confused mish-mash of incomprehensible anti-prop corporation bashing starring unpleasant juvenile delinquents.  One horse plummeted to its death during the filming of one of the ads in Southern Utah's red rock cliff country.  The "truth" ad shown during the last super bowl was voted the absolute worst by television viewers of the football game.  

Financed by the tobacco settlement, namely smokers, the ads are the sole justification for the existence of the American Legacy Foundation, run by a gang of anti-tobacco operatives who couldn't get a job selling used cars.  Judged by the values of the free market, the product cobbled together by these activists would be rated an "F" yet in the wacky world of anti-tobacco, the American Legacy is the sole judge of its work and the press duly follows suit.

"The more students were exposed to the truth campaign, the less they smoked," said American Legacy Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer Cheryl Healton.  Lower exposure to the ads, of course, results in more smoking.  Too be fair, what else could Healton say as she justifies her enormous salary and lavish perks?  It's foolish to expect the truth from a con man but we should expect a bit more from the press. 

September 20 - University Medical School Belatedly Fulfils Its Role -  The University of California's medical school at San Francisco is so ardently in bed with anti-tobacco special interests and has taken so much tainted money that decades will have to pass before its reputation is healed.  This, after all, is the medical school that hired a mechanical engineer as a medical professor simply because of his anti-tobacco credentials.

Perhaps feeling some shame for its strident anti-tobacco advocacy, UCSF is participating in a large lung cancer screening study.  The goal is to find out whether CT scans or chest X-rays can detect lung cancer reliably and early enough so that corrective measures can be taken.  Another partner in this endeavor is the American Cancer Society, a so-called health charity that is long on demagoguery against smokers and short on actual help for cancer patients.

The study will examine 50,000 people between the ages of 55 and 74 divided into groups of smokers and former smokers.  Such a large scale examination may produce verifiable percentages of how many of these people do come down with lung cancer.  Anti-tobacco trumpets that smokers comprise 80 percent of lung cancer victims.  Perhaps some hard figures will result from this study rather than the statistical extrapolations common to anti-tobacco "research".

Many anti-tobacco operatives have publicly stated that producing effective treatment for lung cancer is a goal that is not worth pursuing.  When a pharmaceutical company joined up with a cigarette company to explore developing treatment for lung cancer, anti-tobacco was vitriolic in its denunciation.  Prevention of smoking is so much more lucrative than seeking to find a cure.  No matter the motives and no matter its biases, the University of California should be congratulated for embarking on a quest to aid in the early detection of lung cancer.

September 20 - Tobacco Tax On Ballot -  Despite questionable signatures, a petition to put a cigarette tax hike measure before the voters has been ordered by a judge to be placed on November's ballot.  The measure, if passed, will raise the per pack tax from 17 cents to 72 cents.  The huge tax increase will pay for a grab bag of programs including anti-tobacco activism.  The tobacco control enterprise has had a long-term goal to raise tobacco taxes in each state with a particular percentage allocated, rain or shine, to anti-tobacco.  The governor strongly supports this tax scheme to sock it to smokers and make them pay for programs supposedly benefiting all residents.  Several states have already done so legislatively with the result that thousands of smokers no longer buy their cigarettes within state.  All high tax states are faced with increasing problems from the black market as well as a more generalized contempt of the law.

September 19 - Prissiness Causes Asthma - Clean living isn't always a good thing for young children, researchers said on Wednesday.  A study of over 800 kids age 6 to 13 has found that the ones living in the dustiest environments were less likely to suffer from asthma and hay fever.

The research in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine was another sign that children raised in the cleanest conditions face a greater risk of developing a hypersensitivity to substances that trigger allergic reactions.  Last month, a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that children who had cats or dogs at home were less likely to be have allergies to pollen or molds. Kids with allergies are also more likely to suffer from asthma.

Although tobacco smoke is far less irritating than pollen, molds or pet dander, it too may play a minor role in toughening up children to face the vicissitudes of real life.  The hyper-hysteria that is really polluting North America is prompts many parents to embark on a futile campaign to remove every "risk" from their lives and their children's.  Any creature that is raised in a sterile environment must remain there, since entering the real world involves taking on some risk.  The secondhand smoke panic is only one, although the most visible, aspect of real life that brow-beaten parents seek to shield their offspring from and this shielding has ultimately made their children more unhealthy.  So get a cat, junk the air filtration systems and light up a cigar.  For the children, of course.

September 19 - Congressman Jack In The Box - The country is poised to invade Iraq, the war on terrorism continues, the economy is week and Congressman Henry Waxman is doing the bidding of Big Drugs.  Like a jack-in-the-box that pops up with the same expression and same bleating shriek no matter what the situation, Waxman launched into his never-ending screed against the tobacco industry.  

Long on denunciations and short on actual facts, Waxman's beef this time appears to be that the tobacco industry refuses to completely shackle itself with legally binding positions that endorse every one of the millions of charges leveled against it by anti-tobacco special interests.  His real purpose, however, is to attempt to bully his colleagues and the president into signing onto the World Health Organization's so-called global tobacco treaty.  The global tobacco treaty was written by the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations who plan to use the treaty to drive the American tobacco industry out of business.  Once out of the way, Big Drugs will be the sole provider for the lucrative nicotine market.

Unfortunately for Waxman and his patrons the United States would have to amend its constitution to be a party to the implementation of the global tobacco treaty.  Too bad Waxman can't seem to grasp that tobacco is not an issue the American public cares about.  Too bad he is wasting the congress' time on matters that are irrelevant.  Too bad he is embarrassing his constituents, but that's what a mindless jack-in-the-box does, keeps jumping up and singing the same note, over and over. 

September 19 - Anti-smoking Fanatic Dead At 52 - From Lung Cancer - An anti-smoking celebrity hairdresser who was one of the first to ban cigarettes from his salon has died of lung cancer.  Teetotaler Murdo Maclean, 52, who counted Hollywood star Catherine Zeta Jones among clients at his Edinburgh shop, even avoided pubs and clubs because he hated the fumes from fags.

Last night, his widow, Bett, 52, said: "This wasn't meant to be - he has never smoked or had a drink in his life. He has always taken care of himself and was always fit and healthy. He is the last person you would have thought would get lung cancer."

Never has the old Roman advice of eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, been more needed in a society that equates denial of the good things of life with "health".  Mr. Maclean was obviously a well-liked man whose good qualities far outweighed his irrational hatred of smoking.   It's terribly sad that he was taken at such a young age.

Like a ghoul feasting at a funeral, a spokesflack for Action on Smoking and Health, takes the opportunity of this untimely death to deliver up a lie.

"In the UK and USA, nine out of 10 cases of lung cancer are smoking- related. But there are cases like this which happen unexpectedly." 

Even mainstream anti-tobacco doesn't say that 90% of lung cancer is smoking-related.  Reputable scientists admit that they do not know what causes lung cancer, or any other type of cancer, but all acknowledge that cancer is likely caused by a multitude of factors.  ASH doesn't do its cause any good by exaggeration. 

 James Leavey's Corner September 18 - City Catches Flack Over Smoking Ban - The steamroller that was supposed to impose a California-type smoking ban in Eden Prairie has been stymied.  Businesses are threatening to leave, restaurants vow to sue and the state tobacco control mafia is still wasting tax dollars.  Maybe anti-tobacco has gone too far.  We link to FORCES-Duluth.

September 18 - Week Fifteen - "According to Robert Hare, who teaches at the University of British Columbia and recently addressed a police conference in New York, one per cent of the world’s population are clinical psychopaths, i.e. deceitful, short-tempered individuals who display early behavioural problems that later become anti-social. He also blames the recent blue-chip accounting scandals at WorldCom and Enron on psychopathic chief executive officers, who are easily recognized by their deceit, short-temper, irresponsibility and craving for excitement. Such people, he says, are usually callous and cold-blooded and don’t care that anyone else, especially underlings, may have thoughts and feelings. They also have no sense of remorse or guilt. Goodness gracious me! That almost describes to a ‘T’ many of the anti-smoking born-again puritans most smokers get on the wrong side of every day. The good news is..."

September 17 - California Smog; High Cancer Risk For Kids - A report being released today by an environmental group says that children in California are at greater risk of contracting cancer from inhaling toxic air pollutants than adults.

"The concentration of cancer-causing air pollution in California is so great that, just by breathing this air, children will accumulate cancer risks that are pretty astounding," said Andy Igrejas, environmental health program director for the National Environmental Trust, the Washington, D.C., advocacy group that produced the report.

So what can be done about this threat to California kids?  Why, send undercover cops into bars to arrest adults who are smoking, of course.  This damning report about the filth that passes for air in all metropolitan areas is hardly news.  What makes it noteworthy is that it reveals yet again the hypocrisy of the health departments and "health" charities such as the American Lung Association who are militant about wiping out every vestige of secondhand smoke, which doesn't harm anyone, while remaining silent about actual health risks.

In the four-county Los Angeles region, the state air board estimates toxic air contaminants cause 720 cancer cases per million people annually -- a risk almost 1,000 times greater than the federal government's acceptable limit.

The state and the American Lung Association accept risks of up to 1,000 times greater than acceptable limits but go ballistic over secondhand smoke even though, since the EPA's report has been vacated, the only position the U.S. government can take regarding secondhand smoke is that it is not a hazard.

The final paragraphs tone down the alarmist tone evident in the majority of this story and the equivocation is of interest to those involved in countering the tobacco hysteria.

According to the state health department, Los Angeles County, one of the smoggiest places in the nation, averages 42 lung cancer deaths annually, the eighth-lowest rate in the state and lower than the rates for rural Modoc and San Luis Obispo counties. Experts caution, however, that lung cancer comparisons are tricky because the disease has many causes.

There are nearly 10 million inhabitants of Los Angeles County.  Even using the absolutely lowest percentage of those who smoke, that's 1,800,000 smokers.  Does 42 lung cancer deaths a year equal a scourge requiring hundreds of millions of dollars to combat especially since, as the state health department says, lung cancer has many causes? 

September 17 - The War On Tobacco, It's A Gas - In these troubled times, it's nice to know that there is one thing that can always bring a smile to our faces, and maybe even cause us to laugh so hard that we cry.  I am referring, of course, to the War On Tobacco. Rarely in the annals of government -- and I do not mean to suggest anything juvenile by the phrase "annals of government" -- will you find a program so consistently hilarious as the campaign against the Evil Weed.

He's certainly right about the schizophrenic, keystone-kop antics of the dozens of government agencies that are involved in regulating an innocuous pleasure.  One agency cranks out ludicrous studies demonizing cigarettes and smokers while another passes out government money to tobacco farmers to make sure they don't go broke while yet another seeks to bankrupt the tobacco industry.

The author, however, needs direction so that he can branch out to the truly hilarious characters who beg to be lampooned.  There is no group of people more laughable than the zealots who scream for prohibition.  From the lugubrious Stanton Glantz bursting with pious pomposity to the tight-lipped Puritan, panties in a wad, who haunts city hall screeching that smoking is a pediatric disease, anti-tobacco gets the biggest guffaws today.  Not since the ax-wielding sour-faced temperance myrmidons early last century has there been such a crew, ripe for scathing satire and ridicule.