October 10 - Anti-smoking Goon Squad Strikes Again - Last month we reported the shocking murder of a 13-year-old boy at the hands of a 15-year-old, driven to a violent frenzy by anti-smoking hate.  We laid that tragic death on the door of the tobacco control industry, specifically the American Legacy Foundation, an entity set up for the express purpose of demonizing smokers through expensive anti-tobacco "education".  Last week the results of anti-smoker hate campaigns, such as those endorsed by ALF, resulted in a pregnant woman being shot for smoking in New Orleans.

Matt Myers American Legacy Foundation

The 18-year-old woman, nine months pregnant, was verbally harassed by a man when she lit up a cigarette.  He demanded that she put out the cigarette and when she refused he became enraged and pulled a gun.  Shots rang out and the mother-to-be was wounded in the shoulder.  She later delivered a healthy baby two weeks prematurely.  Mother and child are doing fine, reports the doctor, and the assailant is still be sought.

"What would possess this man to do such a thing," asks one smoker.   "Well maybe he had a health teacher, like I did.  My teacher told us, that women who smoke while pregnant, might as well take the baby and slam it repeatedly against a wall. Because that is what she was doing to the unborn baby. He also said the same about smoking around children."

From Wanda Hamilton:

"It's very interesting that the reporter wrote that most people "cringe" when they see a pregnant woman smoking. When the reporter was in utero, many, many pregnant women smoked and no one thought a thing about it. Perhaps even the reporter's own mother was one of them--at least she no doubt was if she was a smoker.  This makes the second pregnant smoker who was harmed by an onlooker who objected to her smoking. The other was beaten up by a man (a stranger) in a mall because she didn't put out her cigarette when he told her to.

Gee, maybe smoking while pregnant (at least in public really is dangerous to the mother and baby, not because of the tobacco or the smoke, but because hate-filled anti thugs think it gives them license to try to kill the mother and baby. And they object when we call them nazis???"

The level of violence whipped up by anti-tobacco is escalating.  At some point a smart lawyer will haul the American Legacy Foundation, or some other purveyor of anti-tobacco hate, into court for a reckoning with justice.  How many more will be killed and injured before this hate is halted?

October 10 - Private Donations Drive CDC's Agenda - A rich investor presented the Centers for Disease Control six million dollars.  The money will be spent on a range of programs , beginning with a project to eliminate Chagas disease, which kills more than 50,000 people a year in Central and South America.  A tour of the CDC and information about Chagas disease prompted the philanthropist to donate some of his fortune helping the unfortunate.

Although nothing but praise can accrue to the philanthropist, his gift highlights a seldom mentioned peculiarity about the CDC.  Seven years ago Congress chartered the CDC Foundation as a conduit between private donations and the agency.  The donation to eliminate Chagas disease is an excellent example of a private individual helping to solve a problem by donating the needed cash to the CDC to carry out a specific purpose.  Very admirable.

Unfortunately, the bulk of these private donations to fund various CDC activities comes from huge non-profit organizations.  A California insurance company has given the CDC nearly $10-million while, even more ominously, the American Legacy Foundation has given the agency more than $6-million.  The American Legacy Foundation is financed by smokers under the tobacco settlement.  Each pack of cigarettes sold results in money for the ALF and it's program of smoker demonization.  

The Chagas disease benefactor wants his money spent combating that scourge and the American Legacy Foundation expects something for its money as well.  What the ALF wants and what it will get from the CDC is anti-smoker research that will be used to back up its hate campaigns against those who choose to smoke.  Included will be evaluations of the effectiveness of ALF's anti-tobacco education.  One needn't be a fortune teller to foretell that the CDC will praise to high heaven the programs it is paid to evaluate.

October 9 - Anti-tobacco Newspaper Commits A Tactical Error - Yesterday Newsday gloated over the trampling of property rights in the Long Island counties.  To bolster the case of its patrons, Newsday noted that the restaurant business in Delaware had improved since a law banning smoking was passed in that state.  The paper neglected to mention that the law in Delaware takes effect in two months.  What improvements occurred in that state occurred during a period in which restaurants are allowed to permit smoking.  

Newsday also gleefully reported how "successful" the Health Reich in California has been in demonizing smokers and how thrilled the residents are that smoking is banned everywhere.  The paper, as always, dug up some guilt-ridden, self-hating smokers who chirped how happy they are to be treated as untouchables.  One even crowed that he was an ardent supporter of nonsmokers rights.

As its crowning piece of anti-tobacco propaganda, Newsday touted a factoid that it thought proves smoking is good for the hospitality industry:

"In California, revenues in the state's $40 billion-a-year restaurant industry have grown on average 3 percent annually since the law's passage, according to Mark Martin of the California Restaurant Association in Sacramento. Nationwide, restaurant growth was about 6 percent, he said."  - Newsday 10/8/02

Let's see.  The restaurant business in California has grown 3 percent since 1995, the year the law went into effect while the restaurant growth in the United States as a whole was double that.  According to 2002 census figures California's population grew 13.8 during the 1990's while the United States population grew 13.2.  So even though California grew at a slightly more rapid rate that did the country, its restaurant growth was half.  The primary difference between California and the rest of the nation in the 1990's is that the rest of the United States allowed smoking in restaurants.  What is accurate is that the growth in California's restaurant business is half what it would be if smoking were not banned.  Thanks, Newsday, for making the case for allowing smoking in restaurants.  Now get your anti-tobacco talking points straight to prevent you from ever lurching into the truth again.

California's deplorable rate of restaurant growth was reported here several years ago.  It's worthwhile bringing it up again. Smoking Ban Impact On California Restaurants

October 9 - Piles Of Furry Creatures - Last week we reported that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) had joined up with the anti-tobacco control industry to demonize tobacco.  Utilizing donations from the advertising agency that produces the horrible anti-smoker ads for the American Legacy Foundation, PETA is slandering the tobacco industry by implying that they torture dogs and cats, even though the cigarette makers say they only use laboratory rats.  Whatever treatment the rats receive from the tobacco industry pales in comparison to the horrors inflicted upon dogs by anti-tobacco researchers.

Today we focus on a man known more for statistical sleight of hand and political bullying than for scientific research.  Continued INSIDE

October 8 - Tobacco Industry Exonerated In Secondhand Smoke Suit - Prior to the to the tobacco settlement the tobacco industry was rushing throughout the country attempting to settle all suits against it.  The industry erroneously thought that clearing out that debris would ingratiate it to the attorneys general that were shaking down the industry and its customers.  One of the most stupendously stupid decisions, in a history rife with stupid decisions, was to settle a class action suit dealing with secondhand smoke.

The case, in Florida, on behalf of airline flight attendants who claimed to be harmed by secondhand smoke was settled when the tobacco industry set up a $300-million organization to study secondhand smoke.  The lawyers representing the flight attendants received $49-million.  The flight attendants received nothing.  

The attendants' booby prize was the right to sue the tobacco industry individually with their own money since the the anti-tobacco lawyers who received millions are too wise to throw their money away on secondhand smoke suits.  The latest attempt to extract more money from the tobacco industry crashed in flames last week as a Miami jury rightly rejected the claims of Julia Tucker.  Tucker claimed that working 20 years on flights where smoking was permitted is responsible for her chronic sinusitis.  Sometimes juries do get it right.

October 8 - The Fix Is In - John Ryerson, the owner of McGuire's Restaurant and Comedy Club in Bohemia, said he went $250,000 into hock two years ago to create a separate room for smokers.  There was no other choice, Mr. Ryerson said last week, if he were to comply with a 1995 Suffolk County law that sought to protect non-smoking patrons from secondhand smoke. "It was that or go smoke-free and find another job," said Mr. Ryerson, adding that, for his business, smoking is the difference between profit and loss.

October 7 - Wendy Stone - Property Rights Activist -  She doesn't smoke but Wendy Stone is the best friend smokers have right now in Florida.  As a principled advocate for property rights, Stone is poised to derail the anti-tobacco juggernaut's property-rights grab in Florida.

Despite the public's contentment with the state's smoking policy, which ensures all restaurants contain a non-smoking section, anti-tobacco has placed on the ballot an initiative that alters the state's constitution to forbid smoking nearly everywhere, including restaurants.  Stone didn't waste any time crying over this outrage.  Instead she organized opposition to the smoking ban and has worked diligently to educate the Florida voters on this extreme danger to everyone's rights.  Don't write off the liberty this country stands for when people like Wendy Stone are on the scene.

IN GREECE, RAMPANT FASCISM - ONCE AGAIN...

October 7 - Olympics 2004: the Greek government tries to clean up the smoking image of Greece by dirtying it with antismoking fascism –

That passive smoke is a scientific fraud that allows the ministries of health to mask addiction to prohibition and pharmaceutical agendas is a given; that this reality is ignored is, unfortunately, equally a given. Not even Greece – the country with the largest percentage of smokers in the world after Russia is, in fact, exempt from the Fraud of the Century. This propaganda article from BBC states that smokers make up 45 percent of the Greek population (which probably means, in fact, that the REAL figure is higher and that smokers are the absolute majority in that country). The high smoking rate is given as a reason for difficulties in implementing prohibition. Fortunately for the Greeks, they have - so far - totally ignored prohibition drives in the face of disinformation and fines. This propaganda piece continues by stating that the government is trying to “clean” the image of Greece for the 2004 Olympics – thus associating “smoking” with that which is “dirty”. But it does not acknowledge that the prohibition of smoking in public stains countries with a much worse kind of dirt: fascism, now hidden in white coats. Statements about the association of smoking with cancer are never missing in a good propaganda piece, and this one defines Greece as a “cancer bomb” -- neglecting to report, for obvious reasons, that Greece is the country that belies antismoking junk science more than any other place in the world.

With the second largest percentage of smokers in the world after Russia, in fact, the Greeks have in recent years been credited with the longest life span in the world, and the lowest incidence of cancer. This is something that the antismoking mafia and its media accomplices are careful not to mention; if they do, they attribute the “paradox” to diet, ignoring the huge pollution of cities like Athens where the incidence of lung cancer is the highest in the country and the number of cigarettes smoked is the same as everywhere else. Projecting cancer epidemics into the future is yet another desperate way to manipulate associations and to falsify statistics, in order to make inconsistencies “square” with the international political agenda. It should be noted that Japan, third in the world for per capita smoking, also has among the lowest incidence of cancer (lung included). For further information on smokers’ life expectancy, click here.

October 7 - In Greece, use a GameBoy, go to jail - It really looks like Greece is being swept by a wave of totalitarianism and prohibition which, as everyone know, have always been the weapons of the obtuse, and of those who have no competence or intelligence to solve problems. “The Greek government has banned all electronic games across the country, including those that run on home computers, on Game Boy-style portable consoles, and on mobile phones. Thousands of tourists in Greece are unknowingly facing heavy fines or long terms in prison for owning mobile phones or portable video games. Greek Law Number 3037, enacted at the end of July, explicitly forbids electronic games with ‘electronic mechanisms and software’ from public and private places, and people have already been fined tens of thousands of dollars for playing or owning games.  The law applies equally to visitors from abroad: ‘If you know these things are banned, you should not bring them in,’ said a commercial attaché at the Greek Embassy in London, who declined to give her name.”  Simple, right? We forbid, you don’t do it. Where is the problem?... Are you sick, and in need therapy?... Just pay tax, submit, obey… and shut up!  Heil! This is the identical mentality that supports the prohibition of smoking in public. On the other hand, what can you expect from a government that tries to suppress smoking in public for the Olympics?

October 7 - Subsidized golfing for health! - U.K readers in particular should check out “Banned Wagon”, a regular column from the Spectator by Ross Clark billed as “A weekly survey of the things our rulers want to prohibit.” Among the outrages documented in the most recent column is a proposal for tax-payer subsidised golf for sedentary folk who like pricey sports, and this : “Stuart Marples, chief executive of the Institute of Healthcare Management, proposes that the NHS be able to derive revenue directly from people who follow dangerous and unhealthy pastimes. He wants skiers, mountaineers, hang-gliding maniacs and the like to be forced to pay into a special insurance fund dedicated to the NHS. Smokers, needless to say, would be targeted once again.”

October 7 - Get The Documents.  Fight Anti-tobacco. - Last week we reported that new rules went into effect October 1 regarding data and documentation used by the federal government to enact regulations.  It's now much easier to get the information used by the regulators to enact public policy.  The new public disclosure rules also provide a mechanism to challenge the data used to pass rules and regulations.  In many cases, data produced by non-governmental entities can also be obtained.  Below is a template that can be used by individuals who wish to obtain documentation that, in the past, was difficult, if not impossible, to receive.

October 7 - Why Not Just Give Her The Entire Company? - A Los Angeles jury Friday ordered tobacco giant Philip Morris Cos. (MO) to pay $28 billion in punitive damages to a 64-year-old woman with lung cancer who sued the company for fraud and negligence.

Analysts said the verdict -- believed to be the largest punitive damages award in a tobacco liability lawsuit -- will almost certainly be reduced on appeal. But the jaw-dropping amount suggested growing hostility toward the tobacco industry.

Growing hostility?  For once, Richard Daynard, an anti-tobacco operative ensconced in Northeaster University, gets it right:

"At this point, it's really open season on the industry," says Daynard with glee.  "Juries all around the country are sending a message that this conduct was not only totally inexcusable but that it was so outrageous there is no amount of money that would be enough to punish the people who perpetrated it"

As is usual with anti-tobacco blowhards, he doesn't cite any inexcusable or outrageous conduct but he makes a valid point on the low state of the American legal system.  The tobacco industry cannot expect justice in various American courts, including the one operating in Los Angeles, known by trial lawyers as the bank for its reliable awarding of outrageous awards.

The $28 billion award, obviously will not stand, but that it was awarded and that the jurors rendered a verdict in complete opposition to the facts, is yet one more example of the corrosive effect anti-tobacco has on American life.

October 4 - Cell Phone Suit Tossed - A federal judge Monday tossed out an $800 million lawsuit filed by a Maryland doctor who claims cell phones caused his brain tumor.  U.S. District Judge Catherine Blake said none of the evidence submitted by Dr. Christopher Newman was substantial enough to warrant a trial against cell phone manufacturer Motorola and several major cell phone carriers.

The $45 billion wireless industry has been watching the case closely because it could have opened the door to other lawsuits if allowed to proceed. No other such claims have succeeded so far.

Although there is not, as yet, a lavishly funded anti-cell-phone enterprise, there is a pernicious and extremely rich group of parasites that do have the resources to bring down industries who may go after mobile phone manufacturers.  Trial lawyers are now firmly identified as predators who have the money to buy politicians and take on any industry.  From asbestos to tobacco to the virgin territories of fast food, trial lawyers are practicing a form of income distribution that far surpasses the crimes of the old organized crime syndicates.  Every American consumer contributes to the wealth of the trial lawyers and the percentage they demand is growing exponentially.  The gravest internal threat facing the country is to be found in the luxurious corporate suites housing the sharks who are raping the nation.

October 4 - Shaking Down The Casinos - Perhaps the biggest threat to growth in the U.S. casino industry comes not from antigambling interests, but from health-conscious public officials.  A group that sets the country's indoor air-quality standards is under "enormous" pressure to make casinos and other hospitality venues smoke-free, an expert warned attendees at the Global Gaming Expo on Thursday.

"With the collapse of the tobacco industry, the hospitality industry is next to come under attack," said Elia Sterling, president of Theodor Sterling Associates, an indoor air-quality firm based in Vancouver, B.C.

The hospitality industry has been under attack for over 10 years but only indirectly as a co-victim of the smoking ban frenzy.  The industry has been very ineffective in combating the smoke Nazi's since it doesn't argue property rights or scientific facts, only concentrating on its financial losses if smoking is banned.  Since politicians inexplicably believe economic prognostications offered by anti-tobacco special interests, the hospitality industry's fears have been denigrated and dismissed.

As compromise with the anti-tobacco fanatics is shown to be futile, some in the hospitality industry, including the big casinos, is finally recognizing that smoking bans have nothing to do with health and everything to do with social engineering, no matter what the cost.  The tobacco control industry wishes to eliminate smoking and whether businesses are ruined is immaterial.  

"They're in the process of adopting a zero-tolerance approach to tobacco smoke. One molecule of tobacco smoke is unacceptable," Sterling said. "The debate is clearly not about health as it is about social engineering to denormalize smoking."

Lurking in the wings are the trial lawyers who are poised to go after the huge casinos.  If a full frontal attack is not launched upon the anti-tobacco special interests and if tort reform is not enacted to curb in the excesses of the trial lawyers, the casinos, and all of us will lose.

October 3 - The Rules Have Changed - Yesterday FORCES published a link to The Washington Post's article about new Office of Management and Budget "Guidelines for Ensuring and Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility, and Integrity of Information Disseminated by Federal Agencies" that became effective October 1, 2002. (New Guidelines Open U.S. Data To Challenge) We thank The Post for its important and timely report about those new rules.

As reported for the past several years at Forces, the quality, objectivity and utility of information reported by tobacco control enterprise participants and beneficiaries certainly leaves much to be desired by intellectually honest people. Fortunately, there are now Federal information quality guidelines that allow "affected persons" (which certainly includes persons who lawfully consume legal tobacco products) to challenge the accuracy of anti-tobacco "statistics," mantra's and slogans. Readers can access the full text of OMB's new guidelines at Guidelines for Ensuring & Maximizing the Quality, Objectivity, Utility and Integrity of Information.

Full text of Public Law 106-554;HR 5658 that required those guidelines be developed, as included as Section 515 of the "Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001," is as follows:

SEC. 515. (a) IN GENERAL- The Director of the Office of Management and Budget
shall, by not later than September 30, 2001, and with public and Federal agency
involvement, issue guidelines under sections 3504(d)(1) and 3516 of title 44, United
States Code, that provide policy and procedural guidance to Federal agencies for
ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information
(including statistical information) disseminated by Federal agencies in fulfillment of
the purposes and provisions of chapter 35 of title 44, United States Code, commonly
referred to as the Paperwork Reduction Act.
(b) CONTENT OF GUIDELINES- The guidelines under subsection (a) shall--
          (1) apply to the sharing by Federal agencies of, and access to, information
          disseminated by Federal agencies; and
          (2) require that each Federal agency to which the guidelines apply--
                   (A) issue guidelines ensuring and maximizing the quality, objectivity,
                   utility, and integrity of information (including statistical information)
                   disseminated by the agency, by not later than 1 year after the date of
                   issuance of the guidelines under subsection (a);
                   (B) establish administrative mechanisms allowing affected persons to
                   seek and obtain correction of information maintained and disseminated
                   by the agency that does not comply with the guidelines issued under
                   subsection (a); and
                   (C) report periodically to the Director--
                              (i) the number and nature of complaints received by the agency
                              regarding the accuracy of information disseminated by the
                              agency; and
                              (ii) how such complaints were handled by the agency.

Under the new guidelines challenges to government information may, under certain conditions, extend to third-party vendors who provide information to Federal agencies, or who provide information that government agencies rely on in policy or rulemaking decisions. Under those conditions we suspect that tobacco control studies funded in whole or part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation will bear special and well-deserved scrutiny, as will anti-tobacco pronouncements by the foundation's public promotion site, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids (the campaign received a $19.5 million grant from the RWJ foundation in 1996, and another $50 million grant from the foundation in 1999.) What makes those facts important in terms of the new OMB guidelines is that the RWJ foundation is the largest single shareholder of Nicotrol's distributor, pharmaceutical conglomerate Johnson & Johnson. We suspect that studies funded by the RWJ foundation will become the subject of careful scrutiny under the new guidelines because the Campaign for Tobacco-Free kids is busily promoting new taxes on cigarettes allegedly to reduce youth smoking and the campaign also has a history of aggressively supporting new tobacco tax initiatives, such as Washington State's 2001 I-773 that added 60 cents per pack in new taxes. Considering that 90 percent of I-773's new cigarette taxes are earmarked to fund expanded medical insurance, which in turn puts more money into the corporate pockets of the RWJ foundation's principal source of wealth (stock in Johnson & Johnson), information sponsored by the foundation is worthy of the most aggressive review.

Principal among subject areas that FORCES predicts will be the subject of aggressive challenge are the vast array of twisted statistics and crafted study results that allegedly support the conclusion that increasing taxes on "Target Group" smokers materially reduces either youth or adult smoking prevalence. What would happen to tobacco tax initiatives were it to be credibly determined that youth smoking prevalence "statistics" published in the University of Michigan "Monitoring The Future Study," and adult smoking rate information published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its Morbidity and Mortality reports, both contain skewed samples that operate to understate actual smoking prevalence? What would the public's view of allegedly anti-tobacco operatives be, were it to be conclusively demonstrated that not only did the tobacco control enterprise produce increased youth and adult smoking prevalence, but also skewed data to hide and cover up that fact by reporting smoking rates lower than they actually are?

Those are troubling, but interesting, questions. Those questions do, however, address subjects of great import not only to citizens of the USA but also to people in the world at large. Is the USA using skewed youth and adult samples that understate smoking prevalence to export its own private brand of self-serving intolerance for smokers through the World Health Organization (WHO)? We believe that data and study challenges in the future could prove that to be the case.

We will keep readers posted as challenges develop, and as public comment continues on this important subject.

October 2 - Holding Them Accountable -  In the arduous process of creating a federal regulation, the bricks and mortar are the data underlying the rule -- the scientific studies, the surveys, the risk assessments, morbidity estimates, the economic analysis. Regulators at federal agencies are the final arbiters in what goes into the mix and whether it's reliable. Challenges to their judgment usually end up in court years after the rule is conceived.

That all changes today. From now on, virtually every piece of information that the federal government makes public -- through a rulemaking, a publication or a Web site -- becomes open to challenge for its accuracy and veracity.

It's not often that the United States Congress gets something right but nothing that has been passed in recent years is as valuable as a provision applying to the Office of Management and Budget.  Starting yesterday citizens who believe that government information is biased or of poor quality no longer have to wait until a rule is issued to seek corrective action. They can lodge a complaint about the agency's data, along with the basis of their challenge, and the federal agency has to respond in a timely way -- probably 60 days.  More importantly the studies and information the government uses outside the regulatory structure, such as those that address global warming or health risks now fall under the new rule.

"It allows us to go in and have the government justify the information it's using. It allows us to challenge the information," said William Kovacs, vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "A bad rule based on bad information means we spend money and don't achieve the health and safety benefits the rule set out to achieve."

For instance, the 1992 Environmental Protection Agency's report on secondhand smoke would have been open to challenges by citizens who could demand access to the data used by the agency to concoct its infamous decision stating that secondhand smoke causes lung cancer.  Better still, the new rule opens up access to data provided by non-governmental entities, a prospect that special interest pressure groups find alarming.

"Our concern is that it will discourage agencies from disseminating information and slow or halt the issuance of protective regulations," said Wendy Keegan, a regulatory affairs fellow with Public Citizen's Congress Watch. "The possibilities are frightening."

Gary Bass, director of OMB Watch, a public interest group, said the spirit of the guidelines is laudable. But the application is worrisome. "This could cover anything from flight arrivals, toxics, and worker health and safety. It covers virtually every piece of information in the government. If you can't use a certain study, it may mean you can't do the rulemaking."

Judging from the special interests' squawks of outrage, the public will benefit.  Anything that can deter the avalanche of rules and regulations issued in response to junk science and faulty data is very welcome indeed.

October 1 - PETA Jumps On Anti-tobacco Bandwagon -  Demonstrating that anti-tobacco attracts the radical fringes of society, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals aims its anti-corporate barbs at the tobacco industry.  Ostensibly geared to educate the public against the use of laboratory animals to test products, PETA is targeting children with hate and disinformation.  Using adults dressed as giant rats, the group is handing out stickers illustrated with phony cigarette packs parodying popular brands.  One, named Cadaver, is based on Camel and depicts a dog, on its back, legs in the air, surrounded by lit cigarettes.  Another, mocking the popular Marlboro brand, is called Murderboro while a sticker titled Slay'Em portrays a crying rabbit in restraints inhaling cigarette smoke over the legend "Spilled Blood, Uncool Tests."

PETA plans to place full-page ads in the obituaries sections of several newspapers, including The Winston-Salem Journal, The Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia and The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky. The ads are mock obituaries for laboratory animals that died through the experiments of tobacco companies.

Small donors to PETA may rest easy that their donations are not paying for this foolishness.  The advertising agency that produces the incomprehensible anti-smoking "Truth" ads for the American Legacy has donated its services.  Blinded by greed or just plain too stupid to know any better, PETA, as usual, is barking up the wrong tree.  

The tests with animals the tobacco industry conducts is far surpassed in sheer horror by the anti-tobacco industry.  The tobacco industry says it uses only rats but accuracy has never been PETA's strong suit.  In his book, In Defense of Smokers, Lauren Colby devotes Chapter 9 to detailing several experiments on dogs, for some reason, beagles.  It isn't pretty. Continued INSIDE