May 30 - Trendy Ideology Leads To Bad Laws -  Societies that are resistant to good laws are resistant to bad laws as well. Take the example of Toronto v. Almaty (as Kazakhstan's capital, Alma-Ata, has been known since 1994.) Both cities prohibit smoking in certain public places. In Toronto, smokers are content to huddle in doorways, often in sub-zero temperatures. In Almaty, they puff away at the bar in the Lomonosov Theatre, just as they always have. The management makes no effort to enforce the ban.

In communities with a low degree of civic consciousness, individuals resist, avoid or outwit the law whenever they think they can get away with it. Having no confidence in the goodwill or intelligence of the state, they seek loopholes in edicts whose point escapes them. Rather than abide by the law, people will try to win exemptions though privilege or bribery. Often they'll simply disregard unpopular legislation. Needless to say, this hampers good and necessary laws -- but it also hampers bad and unnecessary ones.

One doesn't have to travel as far as Almaty Kazakhstan to see smokers ignoring the odious No Smoking signs.  From Rome to San Francisco puffs of smoke often obscure the signs.  The point of George Jonas, however, is well taken.  The various smoking bans, whether they are scrupulously adhered to or ignored contribute to the contempt of the law.  When laws are arbitrary, such as are all smoking bans, and have no connection to public safety or health the populace finds that flouting them carries little real risk.  Logically contempt for laws that are obviously unneeded proceeds to a contempt for laws that may have a useful purpose.  Contempt then also encompasses the boneheads who enact the idiotic laws.

For a very long time the United States didn't enact many laws unless there was a clear need.  Over the past several decades the cascade of new laws in every state as well as on the federal level have rendered every citizen a law breaker.  From installing the wrong toilet to driving a block without a seatbelt, normal people cannot make it through the day without breaking a law.  Eventually when everyone is a law breaker the distinction between "trendy" laws and real laws becomes obscured.  Anti-tobacco's influence upon society has been toxic in many ways, not the least has been its undermining of the rule of law.

May 30 - More Proof That Big Drugs Is Behind Smoking Bans - In case anyone is still under the mistaken impression that smoking bans are enacted to protect workers or non-smokers from secondhand smoke, research demonstrates that prohibition is designed to enrich the multi-national pharmaceutical corporations.  Every smoking ban initiated by front groups funded by Big Drugs is a marketing plan to hook people on smoking cessation devices.  The goal, as the anti-tobacco operatives make clear, is to replace the tobacco industry as the provider of nicotine.  Money is the goal and health is just the prod.

Background: A fast acting, clean nicotine delivery system might substantially displace cigarettes. Public health consequences would depend on the subsequent prevalence of nicotine use, hazards of delivery systems, and intrinsic hazards of nicotine.

Conclusions: Clean nicotine inhalers might improve public health as much as any feasible tobacco control effort. Although the relevant risk estimates are somewhat uncertain, partial nicotine deregulation deserves consideration as part of a broad tobacco control policy.  (Tobacco Control 2003;12:124-132, 2003 BMJ Publishing Group)

For the complete statement click here.  Registration is required.

May 29 - Class Action Stifled - A Massachusetts judge ruled yesterday that claims by thousands of "light" cigarette buyers against Philip Morris USA cannot be brought at a single trial.

The ruling in Boston by a state appellate judge, Janis Barry, means Marlboro Light smokers in Massachusetts who say Philip Morris, a unit of the Altria Group, lied in advertising about the product's dangers must bring their suits individually. The judge said there were too many differences in individual smoking patterns to bring the case as a class action.

Last week, Philip Morris was among a group of cigarette makers that won reversal of a record $145 billion punitive damage verdict in Florida and decertification of the class that brought the suit. Lawsuits on behalf of large classes often lead to much larger jury awards than individual suits.

"There's been a very significant reduction in the industry's legal risk," said David Adelman, a Morgan Stanley analyst. "It will make it more difficult for these types of cases to go forward."

Philip Morris lost a similar light cigarette case in Illinois in March, when a judge in Madison County, Nicholas Byron, ordered the company to pay $10.1 billion in damages. The judge eventually allowed Philip Morris to post a $6.8 billion bond while appealing the decision, instead of the $12 billion he had originally ordered. - Bloomberg News 5/28/03

May 29 - Breaking The Law To Survive -  Business took a steep dive in Desiree Mulford's Newark area bar when the nation's toughest smoking law took effect six months ago today.

It has rebounded nicely, she said, since she started ignoring Delaware's ban on smoking in most public indoor areas. If patrons light up, she lets them. Her bar - Breakers - now leads the state in smoking-violation complaints, with 21.

"I don't pay any attention to it at all," said Mulford, who has paid a $100 fine. "Some customers go outside, but they can smoke at the tables or go into the bathroom."

After six months of Delaware's Clean Indoor Air Act, plenty of smokers and bar owners still don't like the law. But plenty of patrons - like Tom Rogers of Newark - do. Rogers said he has seen no violations when he and his wife go out to dinner - more frequently now than before the law. He loves how the law is working. "Some places we used to have to factor in - is the bar close to the eating area? Now it's not even a consideration," he said. "And waiting lines are shorter."

Now here are some nonsmoker who truly don't get it.  Tom Rogers and his wife love the ban because they no longer have to make any decisions or choices.  The state, throwing property rights into the trash can, is the Rogers' mother and mamma and has been very good to them...this time.  They are also ecstatic because waiting lines are shorter.  Well, duh.  They are shorter because smokers are not patronizing the establishments any more.  The non-patronage may indeed make the waiting lines so short that they won't exist at all as restaurant after restaurant goes out of business.

This rah-rah story must be read between the lines to understand what is happening in Delaware under a Prohibition regime.  On the one hand the reporter implies that smoking ban hasn't harmed business at all and in the next paragraph reports the dismal decline in profits.  The main point is that a significant portion of the pubs and restaurants are openly defying the ban.  If Delaware is like California non-compliance will continue.  After more than five years over 40 percent of San Francisco bars, for instance, are flouting the non-smoking law.  If resistance is still intense in the heart of the Health Reich, smoking will continue in Delaware until the legislature comes to its senses and repeals this unpopular law.

May 29 - Implementing Tyranny -  Pity the poor Florida legislature who had to rip asunder property rights to accommodate those who bought a constitutional measure to ban smoking in restaurants.  To their credit Their hearts really weren't in it but they had no choice.  Florida, which depends on tourism, has now to smoking tourists to stay away.  Wanda Hamilton provides the historical context:

May 29 - From Parody To Reality -  ...a culture of fear is discouraging parents from allowing kids to do what they did to burn off calories: walk or ride bikes to school, jump rope (jumping rope is now banned in British schools), playing in parks away from home. And schools are saddled with so many other social requirements that they don't have time or money to provide children with physical education. That is a shame.

Ultimately, except for a few changes to welfare policy (especially food stamps and the WIC program), I do not think that obesity is a problem that lends itself to a public-policy solution. Some things, after all, are personal. Greg Critser, a liberal and a Democrat, concluded in "Fatland," his best-selling book: "Most of us are fat because we are slothful and gluttonous. Most people don't want to hear that."

One thing is clear: The runaway lawsuits and the political interventions are actually contributing to the problem by encouraging the belief that people are not responsible for their own health.

James K. Glassman begins this hard-hitting piece about the actual epidemics of hysteria that are neutering America by lamenting that satires and parodies are impossible these days now that the absurd has become public policy and every wild-eyed scheme to rip-off the public is endorsed by legal experts.  He then lays out a fact that is so startling it is no longer uttered:  The obese and overweight are that way because they eat to much and don't engage in enough physical activity.  That's all.  No law suits or laws are necessary and in fact are pernicious to a free society.

He then lists four themes that are profoundly degrading American life.  What seemed a joke a few years ago has become deadly serious.  We can either take responsibility for our actions or we can turn our entire being over to a super class that will tell us exactly what to do.

  May 28 - Mayor Mike's Crime Wave - But lawmakers' memories are woefully short when it comes to the harmful effects of taxation. By the late 1980s, state cigarette taxes were again on the rise - prompting Robert L. Shepherd of the state Department of Taxation and Finance to note in 1989, "In New York, it is literally more profitable to hijack a cigarette-delivery truck than an armored truck."

Today, at least half of the cigarettes smoked in the city have somehow avoided state and city excises. And it's not just the mob: ATF officials report street gangs and terrorist groups are now also involved in the city's illicit cigarette trade.

Mayor Bloomberg stands by his historic tax hike: "We all know that smoking kills. And increasing the cigarette tax saves lives."

And there is the paradox.  Nonsense is enacted as public policy while the truth is discarded.  The ills associated with raising the cigarette tax to astronomical levels are based on hard data and can be quantified.  Mayor Bloomberg's vacuous and emotional justification for contributing to the crime wave is based upon absolutely nothing.  For reasons equally drenched in pure emotionalism the media, health department and even those who direct law enforcement are willing to support the mayor in his lunacy.

Patrick Fleenor looked at the data and presents it to the public and policy makers.  Raising taxes is a pernicious scourge to society.  It was ineffective and harmful in the past and it is doubly pernicious now.  For more information on the losing proposition to many states are embracing check out Mr. Fleenor's policy analysis at the Cato Institute.

Cigarette Taxes, Black Markets, and Crime:
Lessons from New York’s 50-Year Losing Battle

May 27 - Cracker Jack Device To Con The Rubes - Hitting Irish bars soon is the latest absurdity from anti-tobacco gaga land.  In order to fool recalcitrant workers, who know damn well that they will loose money once smoking is banned in pubs and restaurants, the geniuses working the tobacco control rackets brought forth a novelty dubbed a fumatorium.  This miracle device will predict life-span and skin condition, among other marvels, for those who wear them.  

Although the basic premise that secondhand smoke is harmful has almost bit the dust, the grifters hope the device will ignite the fury of nonsmokers against their smoking brethren.  It launching pad is in Ireland because that country has announced that smoking will be banned in pubs and restaurants shortly.  The Irish company that dreamt up the fumatorium has taken its design to the World Health Organization in the hopes that it can be distributed throughout other European nations.  Once again the BBC, which reports this nonsense in all seriousness, has been conned again into reporting inanity as health news.  We wish the developers the best of luck in swindling the WHO and hope to see hundreds of fumatoria distributed throughout bars throughout the European Union.  Those wearing them will be the ones leaving the bars alone.

May 27 - Fanatic Mayor Bloomberg Kills Popular Bistro - Don Alonzo emerged from the Korean War unscathed, but he says Mayor Bloomberg has put a final nail in his coffin.  He looked up at a picture of the grave of his uncle buried in Normandy after he died for freedom, and he looked over a sign that was an obituary for his restaurant.

The sign read simply enough: "Alonzo's will be closing its business on May 30th. 'Thanks' to Mayor Bloomberg!"

"I've been in the restaurant business for 21 years and now I have pretty much lost it all. But worst of all I have lost people who are like my family," Don was saying.  "Ten of the staff are gone. People very close to me. My chef for 15 years who has four kids, he has no job because I don't have a restaurant anymore." Don blames Bloomberg's draconian smoking ban on the demise of his restaurant.

Quick question.  Which will be missed more, Don Alonzo and his bistro or Michael Bloomberg when he loses his next election and can no longer darken New York City?  The most unpopular mayor in the city's history is determined to bring down every last vestige of civility, sophistication and good manners along with him.  While the billionaire mayor was officiated at the marriage of ex-mayor Rudolf Giuliani, at a posh event that included luxurious accommodations for the rich smoking guests, Don Alonzo was shutting up his business and leaving the life he loved.  Smoking bans good for business?  Tell that to Don Alonzo and his vanished customers.

May 27 - Corrupting The Courts - It's no secret that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation spends millions of dollars promoting smoking bans in order to improve its financial standing.  As the largest stockholder of Johnson & Johnson (Nicatrol and other smoking cessation devices), RWJF is very motivated to eliminate the competition.  Every smoking ban is financial good news for Johnson & Johnson and RWJF.  

What may surprise citizens, who have been told that before the bar of justice all men are equal, is that the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation smoking cessation marketing plan includes making cash payments to the courts.  What would get a Mafioso thrown in jail is perfectly legal for the RWJF to do.  In fact, so proud of its cash-for-justice program, the organization released a press release detailing its largess.

Needless to say the ugly word "bribe" is never mention in the flowery words describing how the "justice system faces a public health crisis" that requires the attention of the caring folks at RWJF.  Most people would assume that the justice system is separate from public health but that is shortsighted according to RWJF.  Drug addiction -- and that includes tobacco, but not nicotine addiction -- is responsible for most of the rising juvenile delinquency rates.  To address this problem the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has determined that showering millions of dollars on the country's court system is the way to help kids.

This round of grants ends up in the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago, the Concord New Hampshire District Court, the Marquette Michigan County Juvenile Court, the Santa Cruz California Probation Department and the King County Superior Court in Seattle, Washington.

Gee, it would probably not be a good idea, let's say, to challenge a smoking ban in Seattle or Chicago.  It also wouldn't be too cool to be a smoking parent in Santa Cruz or Marquette on the other side of a desk where a tight-lipped probation officer offers the choice of sending the little darling up the river for a couple of weeks or sending him home to a non-smoking environment.

No multi-billion dollar marketing organization gives money for strictly altruistic reasons.  Anyone who thinks the justice system can become a charity case with no stings attached is a fool.

May 26 - Shakedown Interrupted - Last week a Florida appeals court struck down a $145-billion judgment against the tobacco industry.  The class action suit was the brain child of a husband and wife team who successfully shook down the tobacco industry several years prior when they intimidated the industry into settling a class action secondhand smoke case.  That time the industry coughed up $300-million dollars of which $40-million went to the lawyers.  The class action plaintiffs received nothing.

Encouraged by their success Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt launched a class action suit on behalf of all smokers in the United States made sick by cigarettes.  Although the court narrowed the class to include only Florida smokers, the two were able to persuade a jury to reach a verdict that would bankrupt the industry.  The anti-tobacco industry expressed surprise that an appeals court would toss out the Rosenblatt suit.  The Florida court system has been very sympathetic to anti-tobacco lawyers and, of course, the state Supreme court could reinstate the original verdict if the Rosenblatts appeal.  The clear thinkers have been weighing in and we present three of the best opinions about this victory for common sense:

May 26 - The Stupidity Of The Tobacco Industry Cost Them $700-million Anyway - Lost in the relief that a Florida Court had finally halted the thievery of the tort gangsters is the sad fact that, due to their preternatural timidity, the cigarette manufacturers will still pay $700-million to the plaintiffs' lawyers.  Not a bad return for seven years of work.

Jacob Sullum explains why smokers, as customers of the tobacco industry, will still enrich two anti-tobacco lawyers who have lost their case.  It's a familiar story, of the industry throwing away money that would be better spent aggressively taking down the anti-tobacco industry.  The true villain, of course, is the American court system that is the laughing stock of the civilized world but a huge amount of blame must be attached to spineless corporations such as Philip Morris that wheel and deal, thinking they are getting away with something even while they are slowly being devoured.  Although the grotesque billion dollar verdict has been thrown out, a better solution might have been for the tobacco industry to finally be ruined and bankrupted.  No collection of corporate and legal "talent" ever deserved more to be put out of its misery.

May 26 - The Tobacco Paradox - ...tobacco policy radiates contempt for law. Cynical lawmaking produced the $246 billion settlement of an extortionate suit by 46 state governments against major tobacco companies, purportedly as recompense for smoking-related health-care costs.

Tobacco policy now depends on tobacco products not being priced out of the reach of too many of today's smokers, and on tobacco companies finding a steady supply of new smokers. Because tobacco policy has two primary ends, both monetary, both inimical to public health.

One is a reliable stream of money transferred from smokers (a regressive transfer; smokers are increasingly low-income) to state governments desperate to finance spending programs they improvidently launched during the perishable boom of the late 1990s. The second is the transfer of money from smokers to trial lawyers (their fees from the $246 billion settlement totaled upwards of $15 billion) so they can transfer a portion to the Trial Lawyers Protection Association, aka the Democratic Party, that scourge of exploiters.

George Will, no friend of smoking, takes a broad look at this country's tobacco policy and finds plenty of hypocrisy.  Although approving of the Florida appeals court decision throwing out the $145-billion judgment against the tobacco industry, he finds disturbing that the huge wads of cash dispensed by Big Tobacco to the states and the trial lawyers are corrupting the rule of law.

May 26 - "Anti" is not just a prefix used before tobacco, alcohol or fat.  It is an ideology.  From the same people who brought Winnipeg a smoking ban comes legislation that bans the Shiner's Circus.  The "Anti" ethos seeks to eradicate all pleasure from society and in these times it is the creed that governs us all.

The good times experienced by the Canadian tobacco industry gives the lie to the claim that smoking is on the wane.

See INSIDE

May 23 - Protecting The Protection Rackets - The state Assembly's dominant Democrats had a choice Thursday: help the thousands of small-business owners who have been clobbered by extortionate lawsuits or lawsuit threats under the state's broad unfair competition law, or stand with personal injury attorneys who are among the Democrats' most reliable campaign contributors.

The attorneys, to the utter surprise of no one, emerged as victors in a showdown hearing of the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

Taking time out from wrestling with a $38-billion deficit, the California Assembly handed a big, expensive present to their most favorite special interest group.  Taking a pass on reining in the scandalous shakedown of small business owners, the politicians instead gave their blessing for an outrageous expansion of the racket.

Some years ago one attorney tramped around the San Francisco Bay Area looking for tobacco sale violations in small Ma and Pop stores.  Funding few actual violations didn't deter this self-described activist from threatening to sue the owners.  Most, being recent immigrants, paid up to end the matter with the money being deposited into a foundation run by the lawyer's mother.  His protection racket ended when he made the mistake of taking his smarmy tactics to a couple of huge grocery story chains.

Smoking is hardly the only issue on which lawyers are shaking down small business people.  For years there have been pleas from the small business community to do something about the rapaciousness of the lawyers.  The politicians in Sacramento just made clear who they work for and it isn't the small businesses that are inexorably being squeezed out of existence in California

May 22 - Globalizing the war on tobacco - The treaty of lies and oppression on tobacco recently signed by the international health gangsters at the WHO, may take us in two directions: bad and worse, as this piece from The Lighthouse describes. But “scenario A”, the Lighthouse says, is more probable – with the enormous waste of resources it entails. It is necessary for the forces of liberty and honesty to regroup and acquire consciousness to fight the greatest gang up  on scientific integrity and personal liberty of the history of mankind. It is still possible to win it, and the cost of the political extermination of health Nazism and institutionalised scientific fraud will be enormous. But it would be even more expensive – in all terms – to allow the health fascists and the corrupt to run the world. Already, a similar treaty is in the making to control what we eat – and soon enough everything else. So, we have a simple choice: live by prescription – our lives run by pharmaceutical and lying health tyrants to the smallest detail, or the uprooting of this spreading cancer with whatever it takes. What is your choice?

May 22 - Multi-billion Judgment Against Big Tobacco Thrown Out - A Florida appeals court erased a record-setting $145 billion award against the tobacco industry Wednesday, ruling thousands of Florida smokers could not group themselves together for a class-action attack on cigarette makers.

R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, the nation's second-largest cigarette company with brands like Winston and Camels, issued a statement calling the ruling "a major victory for the tobacco industry."

To hell with the tobacco industry.  This decision is a victory for every citizen in the United States.  It would truly be a "major" victory if the judge's ruling signals a real change in the out-of-control U.S. tort system.  The jackpot justice that has made a mockery of the rule of law has bankrupted industry, increased the cost for every good and service and enriched a gangster class more rapacious and brutal than Attila the Hun and his hoards.  The two grifting lawyers, Stanley and Susan Rosenblatt, were "out of town" so unavailable for comment, a circumstance far more surprising, given their proclivity for self-promotion, than the verdict.  Available for comment, however, was an operative for the shakedown industry:

"Absent intervention by the Florida Supreme Court, this would appear to be a terrible blow to the class of sick smokers in Florida," said Mark Gottlieb, an attorney with the anti-smoking Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University law school.

He called the decision "very surprising" because the same court in 1996 had fashioned the class during a pre-trial appeal. At the time, the appeals court refused to allow a national class, limiting the class to Florida only. It later refused to reconsider its decision.

Perhaps Gottlieb is surprised that common sense finally hit the scene in a Florida court room.  It certainly isn't good news for Gottlieb and his comrades at the Tobacco Products Liability Project.  This merry band of thieves has been licking its chops in anticipation of taking down the food industry, as it did Big Tobacco.  A reversal of their fortunes this big is bound to dampen the plans to rape that industry.

May 22 - Actress' Morals Decried - Australian actress Nicole Kidman has raised the ire of anti-smoking groups by lighting up a cigarette during her press conference at the Cannes Film Festival.  Footage was beamed around the world yesterday of Kidman lighting up at the annual event while promoting her new movie, Dogville.

The Oscar-winning actress was immediately admonished by the film's Danish director Lars Von Trier, but Kidman shrugged her shoulders and kept smoking.

It appears Kidman has smoked for years, with newspaper reports dating back to 1994 saying she had been spotted smoking.  Anti-smoking groups today said the image of Kidman smoking was a free advertisement for the tobacco industry and glamorised the habit.

Let's pause for a moment and reflect on what gets an actor in trouble on a morals charge these days.  Not only does the brazen hussy light up in public but she has a 10-year history of wanton smoking.  How horrible!  Stanton Glantz, the sermonizing, anti-smoking charlatan who equated smoking with terrorism, should file a petition with Homeland Security to bar Kidman's return to the United States.  This gal should be blacklisted and never given a part again so that her corrupting influence can be excised.

The guardians of morals at Action on Smoking and Health are willing to work with Kidman in the rehabilitation process she must undergo to salvage her damaged reputation.  Says Anne Jones of ASH:

"She does have a right to smoke, but what I'm just saying is that smoking in front of millions of people contains this unfortunate association between smoking and glamour and success," she said.

"I will leave it to her to decide how she wants to use that information.

"I think given her role model status it would be really greatly appreciated by health groups and maybe parents in general if she didn't smoke in such a way."

Okay, Anne.  It works this way.  Nicole Kidman is a beautiful, talented star.  She really doesn't give a hoot about the "information" you so gratuitously dispense.  She will ignore you as she would ignore all officious nerds.  Keep talking, though, you may just win the looniest goon award.

May 20 - Up In Flames - This study is bad news for anti-tobacco groups who've based their demands for smoking bans entirely on the myth that secondhand smoke poses a health risk to non-smokers. The anti-tobacco crusade is upset because this study was conducted according to reputable scientific standards, a notion completely foreign to anti-tobacco groups. What's ironic is that the firestorm of controversy that they themselves are igniting might just prompt the media to finally look into the sordid history of junk science that the entire anti-tobacco crusade is based on.

In an historic first, we urge the anti-tobacco extremists to keep yapping.