June 6 - Mayor Follows Pharmaceutical Marketing Plan To A "T" - He's already banned smoking in public places. Now, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is helping to fund a grassroots anti-smoking movement.  The mayor's administration has given contracts to four organizations in an effort to reduce and prevent smoking.  The program will conduct surveys and research as well as encourage pharmacists to sell items that help people quit the habit.

On June 3 Norman Kjono exposed the incredible plan by Big Drugs to replace cigarettes with nicotine inhalers.  Spelled out in a research paper authored by W. Sumner, the steps to implement this plan include raising tobacco taxes, eliminating places where people can smoke and making smoking cessations products attractive to smokers and the general public.  Dr. Sumner is specifically recommending nicotine inhalers as the preferred nicotine delivery device but the particular cigarette substitute is less important than the blueprint in general.

We have noted that whenever the international pharmaceutical corporations introduce smoking cessation devices into a new market, plans will be launched, generally within a few months, to ban so-called public smoking.  Where cessation devices are already sold, such as in the United States, Canada and parts of Western Europe, Big Drugs will give money, often very big bucks, to local governments to address the "problems" associated with tobacco use.  Again, within months, legislative bodies will begin debating the wisdom of imposing smoking bans.

In the past tobacco taxes were raised to help pay for the supposed health problems afflicting smokers but for the past few years, and especially since the tobacco settlement was enacted to take care of the costs run up by sick smokers, the rationale for hiking taxes is explicitly to compel smokers to quit.  Some new cigarette taxes are allocated to help people quit by supplying them with subsidized cessation products.

These marketing phenomena are documented and well known but never has the plan been followed more scrupulously and with such intensity than by Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City.  Shortly after taking office he rammed through a huge cigarette tax which made cigarettes in the city the most expensive in the nation, if not the world.  That done, he bulldozed through a smoking ban that forbids smoking everywhere except private homes and a handful of cigar bars frequented by his rich cronies.  Points one and two of Big Drug's scheme to take over the nicotine market are now in place.

Point three, the promotion of pharmaceutical nicotine and other smoking cessation devices began when Bloomberg arranged for the city to buy 35,000 nicotine patch kits to give away, without charge, to smokers who wanted them.  Upping the ante this week he appropriated $1-million to fund four outfits to masquerade as "grassroots" anti-smoking organizations. The main thrust for these shills is to work on the city's pharmacists to push cessation products.

New York is broke.  Bloomberg has pushed through property tax increases as well as other taxes yet he can still manage to shuffle millions to pharmaceutical front groups to promote cessation marketing drives.  Such is Bloomberg's priority at a time of business flight, reduced city services, the squeeze on the taxpayers and a lousy restaurant and bar climate.  As the residents of America's biggest city endure the worst fiscal crisis in a generation, Bloomberg accepts the grateful pat on his head bestowed by Big Drugs.

June 6 - The Devil Is In The Details - The tobacco control industry is in clover now that the World Health Organization's global tobacco treaty has been approved.  The holdouts collapsed when the United States, described as a renegade nation by the treaty groupies, capitulated.  Since anti-tobacco, like a card shark petrified about playing the wrong marked card, lives in perpetual fear, the celebrations were brief and now their panic is directed at the many countries who have committed to implementing the treaty.  Action will be intense in the United States even though many of the provisions of the treaty, due to their unconstitutionality, are dead on arrival but the real action now moves to other countries that aren't hampered by constitutions.

Even there, as these two articles report, anti-tobacco may be doomed to failure since many of the world's countries are far more dependent upon tobacco production than is the United States.  Most of these countries' tobacco industry is intimately entwined with the government and without tobacco would be more financially strapped than they are.  Adhering to the treaty is obviously not good business and eliminating money from a poor population is risky for any regime.  What most likely will happen is that these governments will pay lip service to the treaty and continue business as usual.  After all, what consequences will befall a government that, in effect, thumbs its nose at the WHO bureaucrats.  All that the WHO can do is withhold its services and considering how abysmal the WHO has been at combating actual health problems, the countries are better of manufacturing cigarettes than worrying about following some treaty that was written in the progressive neighborhoods of Geneva, Manhattan and London.

Asia: Future Hazy For Success Of Tobacco Pact

Africa: Ministries Split Over Tobacco Bill

June 5 - Nassau Smoking Ban Halted -  A federal judge on Wednesday issued a preliminary injunction that effectively puts enforcement of Nassau County's workplace smoking ban on hold.  U.S. District Court Judge Dennis Hurley granted the preliminary injunction sought by Long Island restaurant and tavern owners. They claimed the smoking ban was vague and caused them irreparable harm.

Good news from the Long Island suburbs of New York City.  A stringent smoking ban, only a bit less draconian than New York City's, has been responsible for a 45 percent loss in the restaurant and bar trade.  Along with the dismal financial consequences of banning smoking, the restaurants and bars that brought the suit complain that the law is contradictory and poorly written.

This is a good start to regain personal freedom in New York.  The county, of course, will appeal so this story is far from over.  It's encouraging that businesses are not taking the bizarre interference of ill-informed politicians sitting down.

June 5 - Just Do It -  Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona said yesterday that he supports the banning of tobacco products -- the first time that the government's top doctor and public health advocate has made such a strong statement about the historically contentious subject.  Testifying at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on smokeless tobacco and "reduced risk" tobacco products, Carmona was asked if he would "support the abolition of all tobacco products."

"I would at this point, yes," he replied.

He declined to state whether he would support a law to ban tobacco -- saying "legislation is not my field" -- but did say that he "would support banning or abolishing tobacco products."

"If Congress chose to go that way, that would be up to them," he said. "But I see no need for any tobacco products in society."

Now let's not get agitated and scream that of all the federal bureaucratic positions, that of Surgeon General is the most ridiculous.  Sure, it should be abolished and Carmona's comments may have the welcome effect of building the case to eliminate it from the federal job descriptions.  Of course his comments demonstrate that he is a man who has learned nothing from history and who has a contempt for lesser beings who do not adhere to the healthist religion that has caused so much dissention in our country.  All objections to his prohibitionist goal are superfluous so let's not waste time stating the obvious.

What is needed now is to put anti-tobacco through the gauntlet of public opinion by making it state, for the record, whether it endorses a real, hard-core prohibition of tobacco.  According to anti-tobacco nearly one half million Americans are cut low each year because they smoke.  Secondhand smoke kills up to 60,000 innocent bystanders a year.  Billions of public dollars are flushed down the toilet each year treating the tobacco addicts and the victims of secondhand smoke.  Smoking is worse than all the war casualties combined.

Okay, anti-tobacco, Surgeon General Carmona agrees with you.  He needs your support and your political skills to make his dream of a smoke-free America happen.  The time for advocating higher taxes, smoking bans and de-normalization campaigns are over.  We've all seen that these don't work and lead to confusion.  It's time to end the carnage.  Anti-tobacco, stand up and take a stand!

Already, as this article states, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids has failed to do the right thing:

"We would all like to see a tobacco-free world," he said. "But the reality is that there are 45 million Americans who are smokers, and we can't just take away their tobacco."

Of course you can, Mr. Joel Spivak, spokesflack for CTFK.  Who on earth would be able to stop you?  You would have the weight of the federal government on your side.  The same government that conquered Iraq in a matter of weeks.  The quote above goes well beyond equivocation and indicates that the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids doesn't really want a "smoke-free" world or country.  It indicates that its financial considerations outweigh the horrors of tobacco and that the bloodshed it describes as an epidemic is worth maintaining so that Joel Spivak will continue to receive a fat salary working for the tobacco control industry.

Step up to the plate, Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids.  Think about it, rework your statement and get behind the prohibition that Surgeon General Carmona advocates.  FORCES calls upon all "health advocates" to jump on Carmona's bandwagon and put their money where your rhetoric is.  We eagerly await the responses from the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Medical Association, American Legacy Foundation, Americans for Nonsmokers Rights, Action on Smoking and Health, Joe Cherner, Stanton Glantz, John Banzhaff, the heads of every state's health departments and every organization that has condemned smoking and endorsed smoking bans and higher tobacco taxes.  Your silence or excuses will damn you as profiteers of death, worse than the tobacco industry, which is just a business after all, while you are, so you constantly harp, on the side of the angels.

June 5 - Lighting Up For World No Tobacco Day -  I celebrated World No Tobacco Day by smoking a cigar.

There may be the odd reader who didn't realize the World Health Organization (WHO) designated May 31 World Tobacco Day. Turns out I had it all wrong when I torched up my cigar. The idea is to go around and castigate your fellow citizens for participating in the legal activity of smoking.

We did not cover World No Tobacco Day for the excellent reason that as of yet this phony festival hasn't yet infected the United States and, as with the almost defunct, Great American Smokeout, WNTD is destined to fade into irrelevancy very shortly.  Still, we appreciate hearing from Dave Ryan, columnist for the Calgary Sun, report on his ruining World No Tobacco Day for the few zealots in Calgary who have swallowed the World Health Organizations propaganda.

June 5 - Give That Man A Cigar! - The effort to ban smoking in indoor public places in Charleston has sparked a reaction in Columbia, as state Rep. John Graham Altman III has filed a bill that would prohibit municipalities from banning smoking in bars and many restaurants.

Altman, R-Charleston, said Tuesday that if bars and restaurants want to ban smoking, that's fine, but government shouldn't force them to do so.

"This is an issue of government becoming more and more socialistic and telling the owners and operators of private property what they can and can't do," he said.

Of course the anti-tobacco operatives, and their pet politicians in Charleston, are crying crocodile tears about the loss of local control should Altman's bill ever become law.  And of course if the state decreed that smoking be banned everywhere their fealty to local control would be history.  How about real "local control?"  How about letting the people who open the businesses, make the payrolls and pay the various taxes make their own smoking policies?  It can't get more local than the individual and his customers.

June 4 - BLACKMAIL: Fat people will have to diet if they want to see the doctor - We know for a fact that not one death or disease can be proven to be uniquely caused by smoking, and that it is impossible even to establish the contribution of smoking to that death or disease. We also know for a fact that most of the statistical junk science linking smoking, drinking, and eating to death and disease -- as if it was the only (or the main) cause -- comes from the pharmaceutical industry, which has a crystal-clear interest in the sales of smoking cessation trash, diet drugs and antidepressants. We know for a fact that Big Pharma pays off scientists, a huge number of activists, and media to lie to the people about the health consequences of their lifestyle, and to promote tax-payers’-footed negative propaganda for prohibition and control, which in turn induce the targets to “quit” their lifestyles or habits with the help, of course, of the drugs graciously made available by those who finance this circus of infamy. Finally, we know for a fact that Big Pharma holds in its hands “public health” through the medical establishment, supplying the latter with all kind of luscious perks and money. For a flashing example of that, read Wanda Hamilton's Big Drug's Nicotine War.

Now it is time to put it all together, and the result is something similar to what this article describes:

How could such a thing happen? Maybe it has something to do with the political ascendancy of the career anti-smoker Clive Bates. Not long ago, he was a wacky interest group spokesman, best known for his irrational intolerance and extremism against smokers. Now, it seems, he’s a New Labour advisor tucked up right close to Tony Blair, according to the Guardian: “Under Clive Bates, formerly director of anti-smoking organisation Ash, Downing Street's strategy unit has been examining consumer responsibility across every aspect of public services.”

So there it is -- a forceful blackmail on the citizens perpetrated by a class in white coats backed by a powerful and corrupt industry – a class that has reached way too much political power by using frauds and misrepresentations, while shielded from political repercussions by corrupt ministries of health, and sometimes even the majority in governments. This intolerable and ever-growing social cancer must be addressed politically from the bottom up, that is, from the people themselves, as it is obvious that governments are too corrupt to correct the situation. How can little people do that? There are many ways: demanding tax reform, organising strikes by selected categories, organising intensive educational encounters for laypeople, setting up political action committees – and much, much more. But what’s fundamental is that we, the little people of the world; the smokers, the eaters, the drinkers decide to say: “ENOUGH WITH ‘PUBLIC HEALTH’ WHITE MAFIAS, AND THEIR PHARMACEUTICAL PARTNERS”. And the rest will come by itself.

June 4 -  Ripping Babies From The Arms Of Their Mothers -  In a discovery that could change the way health officials view smoking during pregnancy, Brown University researchers show nicotine has the same impact on fetuses as cocaine and heroin.  Babies exposed to nicotine during pregnancy were more excitable and tense, the researchers say, and they showed signs of central nervous system and gastrointestinal stress.

"This is an important, even essential, contribution to the field, especially as many of the women in the study were smoking fairly low numbers of cigarettes," he adds.

The results also suggest there may be legal grounds for removing children from mothers who smoke during pregnancy, say the researchers.

Let's run that by you one more time so that it sinks in.  A bunch of academics, funded by powerful special interests, are pondering whether it is appropriate to take children away from mothers who smoke during pregnancy.  They equate smoking with taking heroine and cocaine, although last time we checked, smoking is legal and, despite the sophist arguments to the contrary, people, including pregnant women, do have a right to smoke tobacco.  We're talking about child stealing to advance a political agenda.

Reading through the article, and priming yourself with "ETS For Dummies" it's obvious that this study is a weak piece of junk.  To start with the study population base is ludicrously small and homogenous.  The verbiage of the press release itself is riddled with the hedge words beloved by grifting charlatans and contains a proviso so gaping that a mack truck could breeze through it:

"The report, published in the June issue of Pediatrics, suggests the infants experienced "neonatal withdrawal" from nicotine, although the finding was not conclusive."

The only explanation for releasing a mound of garbage that the researchers themselves describe as "not conclusive" can only mean that this study was conducted and released for the usual purpose.  That purpose is to enrich the pharmaceutical industry that is paying the researchers to produce the study in the first place.

June 4 -  The Hazards of a Smoke-Free Environment -  The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation - from New York City to San Antonio - has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat of "second-hand" smoke.  Indeed, the bans themselves are symptoms of a far more grievous threat; a cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved - the cancer of unlimited government power.

...these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favorite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the systematic and unlimited intrusion of government into our lives.

Although secondhand smoke as a hazard is a myth that grows increasingly threadbare, the march to impose smoking bans continues.  What once was justified as a health measure now is blatantly advanced as a means to coerce people into altering their behavior solely to satisfy the prejudices of a bossy elite.  The appropriation of private property that smoking bans necessitate would have caused a revolt even a few decades ago.  Now the populace chews its cud and vainly hopes that the next ax to fall won't fall on its neck.  Smoking bans, as we have noted, are only the beginning of a series of schemes that will eventually turn us all into infantile wards of the state, unable to make any decisions without the approval of a white-coated authority that has imprisoned us for our own good. 

June 4 - Dr. Sumner Responds - On June 3 we published Norman Kjono's commentary on a research paper that advocates replacing cigarettes with nicotine inhalers.  Dr. Walter Sumner, the author of the paper, responded to Mr. Kjono and we link to that response.  Dr. Sumner's response is thought provoking and raises some points that need addressing.  Mr. Kjono will reply soon.

We appreciate Dr. Sumner willingness to join in the dialogue since we always welcome informative discussions among opponents on the tobacco issue.  Those involved in tobacco control are generally disinclined to respond civilly to any opposition to their goals so Dr. Sumner deserves a hearty thank you for taking his concerns with our position directly to us.  Not long ago, Dr. Jed Rose, also a researcher exploring the properties of nicotine, engaged us in a constructive and lively conversation about the goals of tobacco control.  (See Duke of Nicotine) With an issue that affects millions of Americans, deals with billions of dollars and is entwined in important public policy concerns, it is vital that all sides be heard.

June 4 - What We Have Here Is An Epidemic Of Epidemics - We're not sure who to blame but some time during the 1990's the English language was altered to give new meanings to old words.  Perhaps the anti-tobacco fanatics who called smoking a "pediatric disease" began the trend to debase meaning with hyperbole.  Whatever, the trend is now a philosophy of disaster and the latest overused and abused word is "epidemic."  One cannot browse through a newspaper or view the evening news without being assaulted by the latest epidemic.  Jim Austin certainly has paid attention and has compiled an astonishingly long list of situations, events and conditions that the panic mongers now call epidemics.

June 3 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:  "Good news from the state of Washington! A new cigarette tax of 50 cents per pack has been defeated. The bill was voted out of committee in the house and passed house vote, but in negotiations between the House and Senate it was dropped from the Revenue plan. Despite its apparent defeat by end of regular legislative session in April, the bill was still prospectively in play as a bargaining chip in extended session. 

We are now informed by Rep. Laura Ruderman (D-45th) of the Washington Legislature that there will be no new tax on cigarettes in the state. We appreciate her timely and forthcoming responses to keep her constituents informed about important issues. 

Coming on the heels of Washington state Senator Rosemary McAuliffe's bill to extend the state smoking ban to taverns and restaurants dying in committee, this final decision by the state legislature to not levy new taxes on cigarettes is welcome. It's been a tough legislative year for tobacco control in Washington: their two principal initiatives, new cigarette taxes and broader smoking bans, have met with well-deserved failure. We wish the folks at tobacco control many more years of the same."

June 3 - Nicotine Inhalers:  The New Cigarette - Two weeks ago we reported on a research paper appearing in Tobacco Control.  Although the full article was not available to the public we did post the conclusions reached by the author to provide a chilling glimpse into the goal of the pharmaceutical industry to monopolize the nicotine market.  We marveled at the candor of the author whose brief synopsis of the paper explicitly backs up our contention that the anti-smoking movement is nothing more than a lavishly funded, politically connected marketing arm of the pharmaceutical industry.

Norman Kjono did read the entire paper and we are pleased to offer his dissection of the astounding tobacco control position paper, "Estimating The Health Consequences Of Replacing Cigarettes With Nicotine Inhalers," Tobacco Control, 2003;12:124-132, by Walter Sumner, II.

What is proposed is so mind-boggling that it seems to have been written for a publication specializing in satire or parody with no editing.  Although its proposals may induce incredulous laughter it is no laughing matter to the author and his patrons.  They are deadly serious, as well they should be considering the staggering amounts of money that will accrue to Big Drugs should this plan be brought to fruition.  It is also no laughing matter that many of Dr. Sumner's proposals have already been implemented by various public health organizations and state governments.  Never has the public sector cooperated so enthusiastically with huge, multi-national corporations in beefing up the corporate bottom line.

• Replacing cigarettes with nicotine inhalers must replace the goal, unobtainable according to the author, of reducing smoking prevalence to 12% by 2010.

• The "nicotine industry" must "replicate successful smoking themes such as rugged individuality, suave character, and pleasure" to attract smokers to the nicotine inhaler.

• "Displacing cigarettes with a widely used, deeply inhaled, highly addictive, pharmaceutical grade nicotine inhaler" is comparable or superior to reducing smoking prevalence to 12%.

• Pressuring employers to eliminate both indoor and outdoor smoke break areas, lobbying policy makers to raise cigarette taxes and enact smoking bans will drive smokers to embrace the nicotine inhaler.

• The potential customer base need not be limited to smokers.

This are but a few of the tidbits digested and analyzed by Mr. Kjono.  The money trail is also followed and, yes, Dr. Sumner's opus is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a "charitable" health concern holding $7-billion dollars worth of Johnson & Johnson, the maker of the Nicotrol Inhaler, stock.  Health risks for hooking people up to a "clean nicotine" delivery device are acknowledged and dismissed as an inconsequential price to pay for transitioning society away from tobacco.

By the time Mr. Kjono is finished it is obvious that any legislative body that enacts a smoking ban or hikes a tobacco tax is doing the dirty work for Johnson & Johnson and other purveyors of nicotine delivery devices.  It can't get any clearer than this.  After all, this fantastic scheme comes straight from the horse's mouth

June 2 - Mother's Milk Counteracts Maternal Irresponsibility -  Even the Dutch are indulging in junk science these days as this report from the Netherlands indicates.  From its conception the study is flawed but nothing must get in the way of dispensing an anti-smoking message.

What the Dutch researchers found is that breast feeding counteracts the supposed ill effects that maternal smoking has on infants.  What the news report neglects to mention is that the baby boomers in both North America and Europe, the healthiest generation on earth, came from an environment suffused with tobacco smoke.  Growing up surrounded by secondhand smoke and having mothers who smoked up to and during delivery didn't do these people any harm.  That reality, however, is not the glaring flaw of the Dutch researchers.

What makes their study spectacular junk is that they studied only those children whose mothers smoked.  Finding out that breast feeding, acknowledged by all health experts, as well as enshrined by custom, to be beneficial to offspring of smokers means nothing.  Breast feeding is beneficial to all so why narrow the field to smoking mothers?

The answer is a damning commentary on all research conducted today.  If tobacco can be dragged into a study, no matter how inappropriate, the likelihood of funding is assured.  The Dutch researchers are not really interested in smoking but by giving their study the appearance that it is dealing with smoking they collected their funds and pay back their benefactors by harping on smoking.  Billions of dollars have gone down the black hole of tobacco research and nothing much has emerged that benefits public health.  It's a scandal that needs to end.

June 2 - ETS Panic Kills Teenager -  From Scotland comes the tragic story of a 17-year-old girl who plunged to her death to avoid the non-existent dangers of secondhand smoke.  Indoctrinated by "health" educators the girl is a victim of a malevolent scheme to turn nonsmokers against smokers.  Usually the victim of this campaign of disinformation is a smoker but as this death proves, society is really the victim when propaganda trumps the truth.

It's likely that Action on Smoking and Health, the United Kingdom's most powerful anti-smoking pressure group will use this death as yet one more reason to ban smoking everywhere nonsmokers may frequent.  That would include private homes, the scene of this latest example of insanity.  The truth is that had ASH not come into being the teenager would be alive today.  ASH kills, not secondhand smoke.

June 2 - With Blood On Their Hands, They Want A Bigger Cut -  Claiming that smoking will kill one billion people a gang of medicos calls for an immediate cigarette tax of $2 per pack.  What their press release, masquerading as a science story from Reuters, neglects to mention is that part of the $2 per pack cigarette tax would be devoted to funding anti-tobacco education.  Now that most of the price of a pack of cigarettes goes towards taxes, the medical organization decrying the billion people death toll wants to make sure it gets its cut.

The question that reporters should ask, but never do, is just why, if smoking is so deadly, the medical community continues to acquiesce in the slaughter?  Instead of asking for higher taxes, which has never been proven to reduce smoking, why don't these benefactors of humanity demand that tobacco products be prohibited?  The question, of course, is rhetorical.  They don't ask for prohibition because smoking is not nearly as hazardous as they claim and they especially don't want to forego the money that flows into their bank accounts.  The American Cancer Society, the American Lung Association, the American Heart Association have grown very rich indeed off tobacco.  They have as much invested in the continuation of smoking as does the tobacco industry.  The only difference between them and the is that the cigarette manufacturers are honest about their financial motives.