September 24 - Pawning Junk - California this week becomes the second state after New York to sell tobacco bonds with a government "guarantee.''  The bonds are tentatively priced to yield substantially less than the state's previously issued tobacco bonds, which have no such guarantee, but more than California's general obligation bonds.

California finds investors unwilling to buy its tobacco bonds, so it has added shaky guarantees to the latest bonds issued, but the state still "has to hope Americans keep smoking full-price cigarettes if it wants to pay off the enhanced tobacco bonds." Is that why the Golden State is moving toward a $2.00 per pack cigarette tax increase? Maybe $8.00 packs of premium cigarettes will become status symbols. Customers might flock to shell out their cash, just for the social prestige, of owning twenty Lucky Strikes. Yes, you're right, that doesn't make sense, except to a Californian politician. The pols will just have to hope dubious investors somehow become as dumb as they are. They'll also have to hope investors haven't heard about proposed FDA regulation (read: prohibition) of tobacco. That, too, looms among real possibilities in the weeks and months ahead.

September 24 - RJR Is Teetering - Reports that British American Tobacco, the parent company of U.S. cigarette maker Brown & Williamson, was eyeing Reynolds surfaced this summer. Last week, British newspapers said the firm was preparing a $4 billion bid for Reynolds, joining the maker of Camel and Doral with Kool and Lucky Strike and creating a formidable challenger to industry leader Philip Morris.

Buzz about a possible merger has grown in the last week. On the morning before Reynolds' announcement, analyst Bonnie Herzog with Salomon Smith Barney said she believed a deal was "around the corner."

It's hard to say what will become of America's Big Tobacco companies in coming years. Too many factors remain in flux at this point. It may not be very likely, but from a smoker's point of view bankruptcy and elimination of the big companies (especially Anti's most avid acolyte, Philip Morris), would be a good thing. They sold out their customers and guaranteed the rise of fanatical anti-smoking by signing the corrupt Master Settlement Agreement of 1998. Big Tobacco cigarettes sold within the US carry a typical $1.50 premium per pack just to pay off on the Settlement. They are a rip-off. New manufacturers (who are typically coerced into making only 20¢ per pack Settlement "donations," since the new companies "promote disease" only presently, not over past decades like the established companies) can sell cheaper and, if the market opened up so they could grow, they just might stand up for themselves, or advocate in a loud enough voice to promote their customers' interests. This all assumes Tobacco Prohibition does not soon come. Thanks in large part to the capitulations Big Tobacco has already made that assumption is now highly questionable.

September 23 - He Gets By With A Little Help From His Friends - One upside to the current economic woes is that state governments from coast to coast are saving the money that would be poured down the anti-smoking rat hole and using it to pay for programs and services that people actually support.  These days practically the only anti-smoking nonsense seen on television or heard on the radio comes from Philip Morris as it drones on and on about how smoking is the single most important issue of concern to parents.

California is no exception as the pollution of the airwaves by anti-smoker screeds has been mercifully silent for many months.  Even the reactionary anti-tobacco politicians in Sacramento realize that spending public dollars on ineffective, counterproductive and downright mendacious anti-tobacco hate campaigns will not endear them to constituents who are aghast at the state's $38-billion deficit.

The blessed silence was rudely shattered in California's major media markets Sunday as viewers of highly rated television shows were subjected to a duet of shrill issue advertising.  In San Francisco the double whammy occurred mid-way through CBS's 60 Minutes.

The screen filled with the image of Cruz Bustamante lecturing the electorate on how he will save the state should he be elected governor to replace the Gray Davis, the embattled current governor facing a serious voter recall.  First of all, intoned Bustamente, he would raise tobacco and alcohol taxes.  To emphasize the point, "raise alcohol and tobacco taxes" flashed on the screen below Bustamante's talking head.  He then moved on to the other tax-hikes he would impose.  He called his approach to fiscal prudence  "tough love."

Immediately after Bustamante's campaign piece ended, the viewer was assaulted by an aggressive anti-tobacco ad enumerating all the horrors of smoking and how it must be reduced.  The final frame informed the citizens that this anti-smoking ad was brought to them by the state's health department.

Very strange and very troubling.  Are the anti-tobacco bureaucrats in the state health department endorsing Bustamante because he is their man or was it just a coincidence that, after months of zero anti-tobacco ads on television, the health department, by chance, issues an ad to be placed right after a campaign spot urging the voters to select a man who promises to raise tobacco taxes?

September 23 - Smoking Ban Gets The Cold Shoulder - Tony Blair is to block plans to introduce a US-style ban on smoking in public places.  The prime minister has told colleagues that any step of this kind would be a severe restriction on people’s freedoms and would increase red tape for business.

Action on Smoking and Health is shrieking in outrage as Britain's Prime Minister indicates that the smoking ban proposed by the European Union Bureaucrats is not something he wants imported to his country.  The only silver lining to the odious smoking bans proliferating in the United States is that the more the Europeans see them, the more they find them detestable.  What is never mentioned in the anti-tobacco press, both in America and abroad, is that politicians who embrace tobacco prohibition rarely do very well.  The roadside is littered with anti-smoking warriors who have been cast aside once the public gets a good look at their fanaticism and hatefulness.  Blair is not only taking the high road but is also taking the smart road.

September 23 - In Hell, Adolf Hitler Is Smiling - Cigarette smoking will finally be tamped out Sunday at Grandma's Kitchen, a truck-stop restaurant that had been flouting the state's indoor smoking ban.  Owners of the Citgo truck stop at 6503 U.S. 301 told restaurant operators Wava and John Saunders on Friday that they are being evicted . They have leased the place since May.

Wava Saunders said the plaza owners gave the couple the option of tossing the butts and keeping the restaurant.

"That would have gone against what I believe in and what we have been fighting for,'' she said.

When Florida banned smoking in restaurants, Wava Saunders stood up for her principles and refused to obey.  She received good press for her feisty stand and also plenty of customers who to their business to a place where they were treated with respect.  Too gutless to take on this elderly lady directly, the smoke Nazis threatened to yank a liquor license from her landlord's convenience store business.  Facing the loss of his livelihood, the landlord evicted Ms. Saunders.

September 23 - Wiping Out Jobs -  There's a new element in the aroma that surrounds the enormous R.J. Reynolds Tobacco cigarette factory here, just outside Winston-Salem.  It's fear, a scent that sharpened last week when the nation's second-largest cigarette maker announced it was cutting nearly 2,700 jobs -- 40 percent of its work force.

The RJR jobs are good ones, particularly at the blue-collar level. Workers on the factory floor can earn $50,000 or more a year with overtime.  Anita Levins remembers what her parents used to tell her about the largest employer in town.

"If you can get a job at R.J. Reynolds, you had it made," said Levins, whose late father worked for the company for about 15 years before he retired in 1987. "You didn't even have to go to college. But these days, that doesn't cut it."

The Winston-Salem, North Carolina Chamber of Commerce has hopes that growth in the health care industry will help offset drastic downsizing at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Of course, to a great extent, the US tobacco industry brought its woes on itself, by agreeing to the corrupt Master Settlement Agreement of 1998. 

Today, companies like RJR make about twelve cents, on a pack of cigarettes that costs near a buck to manufacture, and which typically retails for around five dollars. About four of that five dollars goes to taxes or to the de facto tax of Master Settlement payments. 

That's why the same packs of famous brand cigarettes, made the same day at the same American factory, cost $5.00 at a typical US convenience store, $2.50 at an Indian reservation which avoids straight taxes, and $1.50 at a European duty free shop which avoids both taxes and the US Master Settlement mark-up. (Incidentally, the $1.50 price includes air mail postage, for a $15 carton, from Europe to a United States customer's home address.) 

Meanwhile the parasites in white coats, Public Health and the pharmaceutical industry, push fascistic anti-smoking and their own "nicotine replacement" products. Big Tobacco is a bit player in today's cigarette market. Government stuffs its coffers with smokers' hard-earned cash. The health care industry is growing. 

This is nothing more or less than a victory of corruption. Excessive taxation, by itself, was a major impetus to the American Revolution. Anti-smoking measures have gone far beyond confiscatory taxation, becoming an unconscionable vilification campaign, directed against more than a quarter of the US adult population. 

Everybody dies of something, most often around the age of seventy, whether they smoke, or whether they don't. If tobacco magically disappeared from the face of the Earth tomorrow, you could see an extension of statistical life expectancy in countries like the USA, of a year or two, an effect that would appear gradually, over several decades. For this, Anti has gleefully sponsored a deceitful hysteria campaign, directly attacking the ideals of personal choice, personal liberty, and civility amongst the populace. Good deal? We think not.

September 22 - Mobiles to beat nicotine craving – “Smokers desperate to give up cigarettes could soon resort to a small program on their mobile phone or PDA.” … And what is the technique used, this time? A bunch of dots dancing around on the display!  “The idea has been tested in the lab on a desktop computer in a controlled [junk science] study on students.”

At a time when cellular phone makers have put in devices for all kinds of useless functions – to the point that sending a message or making a phone call will soon require a programmer’s degree – propaganda junk science to “cure you” from diseases that don't exist couldn't be left out. “The dots create what is termed ‘visual noise’ and interfere with the pleasurable images the mind associates with the object of desire”, continues the article from junk science popularizer BBC. It goes without saying that this useless gadgetry could be recycled for anti-fat, anti-sugar, anti-alcohol, anti-soft drink, and anti-pleasure in general – while it is unlikely that you’ll see dancing dots to dissuade you from using the cellular phone anytime soon. That is because the World Health Organisation recently and quietly dropped its anti-cellular phone propaganda (maybe Big Pharma was unable to develop a seemingly credible “therapy” for the impulse to make calls).

To close the piece with a Pharmaceutical buzz (as is now customary for a "respectable" article of this genre)  we are treated to free publicity for smoking cessation drugs: “If  [the flickering dots display] could be established then a dots ‘game’ could form the basis of therapy that would work alongside chemical intervention, including nicotine-replacement patches and future vaccines.” No thanks, guys. We suggest you attempt to cure yourselves. Differently than you, we are not sick and we don’t need any “therapy”. On the other hand, you guys badly need it, and here is a suggestion: take your own mobile, select "vibration" under "ringer selection" and stick it where the sun don't shine.

September 22 - How confused are we by the antismoking fraud? – We recommend reading this forum we are connected to for several reason, starting with the title (Should more be done to combat smoking deaths? – Yes, we could institute concentration camps, perhaps).

The most interesting part is the forum (now closed) that follows the piece. A great variety of points of view is portrayed -- from: “Smoking should be illegal. Since individuals are too stupid to protect themselves from the danger of smoking, laws must protect them” by Brian – obviously an illegitimate descendant of Mussolini – to “my father died of smoking”, followed by the usual depiction of lung cancer metastasis; when in fact it is scientifically impossible to determine whether dad’s or anyone else's lung cancer was caused by smoking or any of the other 40+ known factors. As we've long observed, however, that is irrelevant: it the belief that counts. Several writers think that making smoking illegal is a supremely useless effort, while others pretend to respect the rights of smokers to smoke but demand that smoking in public be made illegal everywhere. Of course, no one asks the fundamental question: “If not one death can be scientifically proven to be caused by smoking, how do we get to the 5 million figure?” because that implies the only possible answer: “With statistical junk science”.  Perhaps the most acute question in the forum comes from Mr. Nicholson: “Only 5 million? The world's population is now over 6 billion. That's less than one tenth of one percent. I thought smoking was really dangerous? Perhaps the statistics are wrong?” They sure are wrong, Mr. Nicholson – in fact they are a fraud as, again, it is scientifically impossible to assign a specific mortality to smoking except with wild epidemiological guesswork. Epidemiology is statistics, and statistics are not science. In the end, life causes 100% of all deaths. The next time you light up (or even if you don't smoke) ask yourself what your death is going to be blamed on by the con artists of "public health". After all, nobody has ever died from excessive healthiness, yet we all end up going eventually.

September 19 - Big Nanny On A Rampage - The good doctor is at it again. Despite a spring and summer of SARS and West Nile, Toronto's Medical Officer of Health Sheela Basrur and her priority-challenged Board of Health have just joined North America's hottest junk science craze -- childhood obesity.

Dr. Basrur is not the first in the province to issue a call for a fat jihad. Liberal leader Dalton McGuinty pledged earlier this year to eliminate "junk" foods from the province's schools. Both Dr. Basrur and Dr. McGuinty appear to be echoing calls in the United States for a campaign against childhood fat modelled on the already familiar and unsuccessful war against youth smoking.

September 19 - How It Works - They may be reprehensible and a danger to freedom but there is no denying that the tobacco control industry has demonstrated a steely resolve in pursuing its agenda.  Wanda Hamilton reminds us how we find ourselves coping with the absurd yet sinister policies that trample property rights, encourage discrimination and loot millions to enrich the politically connected few:

Back in 1991, the National Cancer Institute (of the U.S. Dept. of Health) published the first of its anti-tobacco monographs. The monograph was entitled "Strategies to Control Tobacco Use in the United States: A Blueprint for public health action in the 1990s."   According to a document on grants by California's Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, this monograph and the two that followed it were "developed jointly by the ANR [the Stanton Glantz founded Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights organization] and NCI."  Don Shopland (the man behind most of the Surgeon General reports on tobacco and Environmental Tobacco Smoke) was the prime mover for the monographs at NCI.

Many, many of the familiar anti names show up in the acknowledgments of the monograph, including Glantz, Scandria, and many others who have either received Robert Wood Johnson Foundation money or actually worked for RWJF, such as C. Tracy Orleans.

Just to show how the antis have never varied in their strategies, here are some of the conclusions of the "Strategies" monograph:

• "The targets of recent interventions to control tobacco use are social networks that shape the attitudes of individual smokers and nonsmokers, including media, health care providers, worksites, and schools."
• "The use of media in tobacco control includes providing information on the risks of tobacco use and dangers of policies that promote tobacco use, motivating smokers to stop and others to not start, and conducting cessation programs or recruiting smokers into treatment programs."
•  "Health care providers should not only intervene with their smoking patients but also be agents for social change."
• "Restrictions on smoking in the worksite and other locations change the social acceptability of smoking and may increase the number of individuals who try to quit and who have long-term success after cessation."
• "Comprehensive smoking control strategies are best implemented at the local level and can be implemented through formation of coalitions of established community groups."
• "Economic incentives that may reduce the consumption of cigarettes include increasing the excise tax on tobacco products; preferential hiring and promotion of non-smokers; and increasing the cost of life, health, and other forms of insurance to smokers."

Notice that there are no mentions of ETS or protecting non-smokers in these conclusions. Well, that's because the antis didn't have the Environmental Protection Agency report in hand yet (with all its attendant publicity about ETS). Obviously the ETS argument was just another tool in their prohibitionistic campaign, not the motivation for it.

I got a copy of the "Strategies" monograph back in 1993, and when I read it, I was chilled to the bone by some of the material in it because it was a U.S. Department of Health publication -- my own government publishing sinister crap like this and using tax dollars to do it. That began my hardened cynicism about the "health" bureaus of the government and the lies they promote and the dubious social engineering campaigns they engage in.

September 18 - Cave Canem And Kick Them Out Of Italy - The Queen’s favourite breed of dog, the corgi, has been put on an Italian government list of dogs banned because they are dangerous.  Corgis - of which the Queen has more than 100 - collies and St Bernard rescue dogs have all been labelled as "very dangerous" according to the new law.

A pack of desperados await expulsion from Italy

A multitude of stereotypes adhere to Italy and the Italian people.  Some good, some bad.  That's not surprising since the Italian peninsula is the focal point and source of Western Civilization.  Health hysteria has not been stereotypical of Italy but the current health minister is bound and determined to drag that easy going country into the sphere of hypochondria occupied by the United States and the prissier sections of Canada.  From wagging his finger in the faces of smokers to dictating what Italians can eat, Girolamo Sirchia appears to have lost all reason as he endlessly hectors the population to embrace a bizarre concept of living more attuned to the anti-pleasure principles of a California university town.

Nothing escapes his censorious eye as he issues directives ordering the citizens to save themselves from themselves.  You want a dog?  Fine, but Minister Sirchia will tell you what kind of dog you may have.  He has been making a list of demon dogs and, at 92 breeds, it's quite comprehensive.  His technique for ascertaining which unlucky breeds make his list of the proscribed is as logical and rational as is his basis for enacting anti-smoking and anti-food policies:

"Scientifically, it’s difficult to define which dogs are aggressive or not, so its better to group them all together."

There is the Sirchia method in a nutshell.  Whatever he doesn't like must be banned.  That's great for him but since when did a large and sophisticated country start taking its orders from an appointed health bureaucrat? 

September 18 - Latte Tax Dead In Seattle - The proposed 10 cents per espresso tax in Seattle lost by an overwhelming margin of 2 to 1 in Washington's primary elections yesterday.

Opponent's comments on the defeat of this tax included the view that it never made sense to Seattle voters to tax an unrelated product such as coffee for child care. Well, it didn't make sense for smokers to be taxed to clean up the water in Puget Sound, either, yet voters passed that tax in the 1980s. And smoking is clearly unrelated to to providing health insurance for the poor, yet Washington voters passed a 60 cents per pack tax on cigarettes in 2001 to fund expanded health insurance.

We will see how far objecting to new taxes on specific products to fund unrelated public service products goes when anti-tobacco floats it next cigarette tax proposal in Washington. Hopefully, such sound logic will continue to carry the vote on cigarette taxes as it did for espresso.

September 18 - Tax-happy Paper Reverses Itself - Seattleites, typically generous with tax dollars, were savvy enough to recognize the terrible precedent that would be established by taxing something simply because it produced a lot of revenue.

Well fancy that! Then why did The Seattle Times support I-775 in 2001 because it would generate hundreds of millions per year in new cigarette revenues to fund health insurance for the poor?

We trust that The Times will express its new-found objection to taxing target products simply because they generate a lot of revenue the next time a cigarette tax increase is proposed. The Times implies revisionist history: it fails to disclose that its editorial position was precisely the opposite less than two years ago when it supported a massive increase in cigarette taxes.

There may be hope here, however. Perhaps the public mood to accept special-interest bans and taxes is truly changing. We await confirmation of that trend in the next elections.

September 18 - Betraying The Native People, Again - American Indians gave tobacco to the world, and Europeans took it up enthusiastically, incidentally taking over most of the American continents, while they were at it. New York State, however, doesn't feel the Indians gave up enough. Seneca Nation, like other sovereign tribes, feels differently. Whatever else happens in the divisive and truly senseless War on Cigarettes, one thing, will not change. Absent the artificial premiums of taxation and litigation recoup, a top quality pack of cigarettes can be made, for less than a buck. Some people today will pay upwards of $8 for that pack of smokes, but as the artificial price keeps going up, more and more consumers wise up too. Legislators may try to scam Indian nations, the way they've scammed their own, but no price balloon can expand forever. Renewal of the Indian Wars is good news only to the ears of aspiring black market profiteers.

September 17 - Louisville Gets Serious About Liberty - With their recent success in Lexington under their belt, anti-tobacco moves on to Louisville.  In that city prohibition is welcomed by the board of health but vehemently opposed by businesses and property rights advocates.  The local Libertarian Party is also opposed to smoking bans and recently hosted a meeting on the issue.  Activist Terry Gray reports.

September 17 - Public Enemy Number One - The agency saddled with enforcing New York State's unenforceable and widely reviled smoking ban has chosen an unlikely target for its inadequate resources -- a grandmother's three-chair beauty shop in LaSalle.  Niagara County Health Department inspectors raided Salon Donna Marie twice in the last month, threatening the longtime proprietor with fines that could put her out of business after more than 40 years.

A health inspector first visited Donna Earp's shop on Aug. 22, acting on one of the anonymous complaints that comprise the foundation of Niagara County's enforcement strategy.  Another came calling last Thursday, again following up on a tip from an unnamed snitch.

This is not a joke.  This is what happens when politicians allow lying ideologues to adulterate public policy.  Elliot Ness and his prohibition enforcers have been revived in New York and grandma, the hairdresser, has their full attention.

September 17 - Incremental Prohibition - Seventy years ago today, Nevada voted to ratify the 21st Amendment, marking an important milestone on the road to ending Prohibition nationwide. But a subtler and more insidious movement is now using a back-door approach to de-legitimize social drinking. Some people call it "Prohibition drip by drip."

This movement is eerily similar to the movement that gave us Prohibition. Like the early 20th century movement, it is well organized, it is self-righteous, and it has sympathetic ears in the media. And considering that nearly all of its supporters seem to be bankrolled in some way by the $8 billion Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), it's even better funded than its pre-Jazz Age forbear.

Like a mugger looking for a defenseless victim, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is lurking behind any and all efforts to enact prohibition.  As Wanda Hamilton observes:

Yes, it's the same coalition of thugs from the tobacco war who are now going after alcohol and food: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the "public health" government bureaus, the non-governmental "health and safety" organizations, the tort lawyers, and -- last but not least -- the politicians who are always looking for additional means of taxing the people in order to fund their own spending addiction. And, as always, these groups scratch each other's backs. The organizations lobby for more money for the government agencies who in turn give more money to the orgs. The lawyers help the orgs with their causes in return for making big bucks in lawsuits. The politicians raise taxes to spend on, among other things, more money for the government bureaus' programs, which is more money for the orgs, which then indirectly support the politicians' political campaigns. And the RWJF orchestrates most of the plan, sitting in "partnership" with various agencies of the federal government and with the non-governmental organizations and helping the trial lawyers. And RWJF adds to their billions in stock in Johnson & Johnson by promoting more pharmaceutical "interventions."

The fact is that the tobacco war and the resulting smoking bans paved the way for the war against food and drink. The smoking bans have driven some bars and restaurants out of business, and they have weakened those that survive by eroding some of their customer base and have greatly driven down profits from the sale of alcoholic beverages. If the prohibitionists (RWJF et all) get their way, soon there will be no bars. After all, bars are where Americans (the great "unwashed" citizenry the nannies so despise) have traditionally congregated to foment rebellion against tyranny. They did it before the American Revolution, and they might just do it again against the new healthist "royalty" that threatens our freedom.

September 17 - Anti-tobacco Template Copied For Anti-alcohol Policies - Congress and state legislatures should raise taxes on alcohol, especially beer, to discourage underage drinking, advisers to the government said on Tuesday.

The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council also recommended more careful advertising of alcohol to ensure children do not get bombarded with pro-drinking messages.

The Motion Picture Association of America, for instance, should consider content about alcohol use when rating films, and assign mature ratings for movies that portray drinking in a favorable light,

Sound familiar?  It should.  The above are only a few of the talking points that, substituting tobacco for alcohol, have been hammered into the country by the tobacco control industry for decades.  With the stunning success anti-tobacco has had in raping tobacco consumers, aided in a major part by the cowardice of the tobacco industry, the time is ripe for transferring more money from the working class to the parasite class.  

September 17 - Secondhand Smoke Is Harmful To Science - Looking for a surer method of being ripped apart than entering a lion's den covered with catnip? Conduct the most exhaustive, longest-running study on second-hand smoke and death. Find no connection. Then rather than being PC and hiding your data in a vast warehouse next to the Ark of the Covenant, publish it in one of the world's most respected medical journals.

That's what research professor James Enstrom of UCLA and professor Geoffrey Kabat of the State University of New York, Stony Brook discovered last May. That's when they reported in the British Medical Journal that their 39-year study of 35,561 Californians who had never smoked showed no "causal relationship between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) and tobacco-related mortality," adding, however "a small effect" can't be ruled out.

When two respected researchers published their comprehensive study regarding secondhand smoke, the howls of outrage were swift and vociferous.  Never addressing the study itself, the critics indulged in innuendo and ad hominen attacks.  Such vitriol cannot change the results which are completely in line with the majority of secondhand smoke studies.  Enstrom and Kabat didn't break any new ground.  They merely added to the overwhelming evidence that the secondhand smoke scare is financially motivated.

Michael Fumento, no friend of smoking, lacerates the dishonesty of Enstrom and Kabat's critics while pointing out that shoddy research which backs up the current orthodoxy pays big bucks while real scientific research that reaches politically incorrect conclusions is repressed and its authors vilified.

September 16 - The "Tobacco Buy Out"; Winners And Losers - We are pleased to post a reprint of Norman Kjono's Op-Ed "In The Balance," published by The Los Angeles Daily Journal, the largest legal newspaper on the West Coast, July 30, 2003.

Yesterday, July 15, 2003 we published a report about Rep. Ernie Fletcher's (R-KY) bill to end tobacco price supports, through a buy-out of tobacco quotas. In that posting we also reported on Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-KY) bill to give the U.S. Food and Drug administration authority to regulate tobacco. Today we add the connection between Sen. McConnell's bill and the $18 billion economic interests of tobacco bondholders. It appears that Sen. McConnell is implementing a plan published by tobacco control advocates to replace cigarettes with pharmaceutical nicotine inhalers. As explained in Mr. Kjono's published July 30 article, should that be the case tobacco settlement asset-backed bondholders may find their $18 billion investment to be collateral damage in the War on Tobacco. We cite previous Forces reports and current events to support that case. Continued