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Articles logged November 2003
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Far worse than the indifference to prohibition regulations is the indifference to the pharmaceutical smoking cessation snake oil that Big Drugs peddled to the university: Frances Mantak, director of Health Education, said a 2001 study found 20 percent of Brown students had smoked a cigarette in the last 30 days. But most students today seem unconcerned with quitting, she said. A study which offers students free patches, up to $100, free pizza and guidance, has been on campus for the last two years, but response has not been good, Mantak said. Well hallelujah! This is great news for the country when well-educated young people attending an elite university appear immune to the hate, distortion and lies that have insulted their intelligence from kindergarten through high school. Anti-tobacco is losing. It's a beautiful thing.
The reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle didn't note whether prissy legislators fled in horror at the sight of a man enjoying a smoke in the sacred confines of power. Most likely even the most doctrinaire of the anti-smoking zealots were hovering around hoping to be noticed by Arnold Schwarzenegger, California's new governor. Although the new governor has not uttered one word about smoking issues the mere fact that he isn't a knee-jerk believer in the myths promulgated by the tobacco control industry has the operatives worried. So worried that two days before Schwarzenegger's swearing in ceremony the state's Tobacco Control Section issued a jerry-rigged report touting the wonders of California's anti-smoker campaign. With the previous anti-smoking governor and a legislature wedded to the prohibitionist ethos the anti-tobacco special interests were assured a steady revenue stream courtesy of the taxpayers. Although the state has been broke for several years anti-tobacco could always be assured of its cut from the treasury. Schwarzenegger was elected to clean up the financial mess. He has promised to do so by eliminating government waste. There is nothing more wasteful than the billions of dollars poured down the anti-tobacco gopher hole and the rodents who slurp up the goodies are panic-stricken that their gravy days may be at an end. It will take an iron will to stand up to the thieves who are experts at protecting their turf. Smoking in the absolute center of California's political power is a very good sign that Schwarzenegger may have to will needed to bring some sanity back to the Health Reich.
The tobacco control industry, however, has a fight on its hands as resistance to prohibition is growing. We feature one grass roots organization that is giving the anti-smoking goons a run for their money.
Jim St. John took a look at the juvenile prose and fired off a missive that puts the little girls temper tantrum into perspective: If your editorial staff is annoyed by having their lovely hair and fancy clothes being blemished by a scent of tobacco smoke after they go to a bar, maybe they should stay out of blue-collar watering holes that don't cater to yuppies. There is an abundance of fern-and-brass venues where they can go and buy a sip of white wine...with everything as antiseptic as their flawless personas. The social and recreational habits of working people are obviously offensive to a committee of snobs at the Herald, who, in their superior wisdom, want to protect them. Your editorial elitism blinds you to the fact that a smoking-permitted tribal bar or restaurant is only minutes away from hundreds of businesses around the state that want to accommodate all of their customers with high-tech ventilation and filtration technology. Your proposal would soothe your personal comfort and vanity, but would come at a huge cost to workers and customers of bars and taverns who don't want or need your phony benevolence. Heck, many of them work at nasty industrial jobs that require them to breathe levels of pollution hundreds of times what they theoretically encounter in a bar after work. You can dress up this smoking ban pig however you want, but it's prohibition under the makeup...and won't fly on Saturday night.
"The criminal gangs who target regional airports will be getting the message," says a British Customs official. Is he talking about heroin or diamond smugglers, or terrorists, infiltrating Britain's borders? No, the big bust in Exeter, is of a thousand cartons of cigarettes. As Western nations ratchet up cigarette taxes they create a new "criminality" in sales of a legal product. Black market smugglers understand, the higher taxes go, the more demand there'll be, for an underground cigarette market. Maybe governments will get the message before underground sales take eighty per cent of that market, as is reportedly the case, in high-tax Iran. Maybe they'll never get it.
With the vast majority of America's roadways controlled by the government, it's only natural that they are ill-maintained and operated. Rush hour commute is a nightmare in most metropolitan areas while many roads, including those that are part of the interstate highway system, are falling apart. Brad Edmonds makes a good case for privatizing most, if not all, roadways. Sound far fetched? Only to those who believe that the government is capable of delivery good service for a reasonable price. Taking government out of the roadways would reduce the accident rate while eliminating some of the most hated regulations on driving. Would this work? Of course it would. People and markets can make anything work. You cannot find an example of a "market failure" that doesn’t have its roots in government intervention.
To add insult to injury, Mayor Bloomberg has made it almost impossible to smoke a cigarette in any public place in the city. The smoking ban has clearly harmed the city's restaurant, bar and convention business. New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg is a much and deservedly despised man. He is putting people out of work for one thing, having provided the impetus for the city's smoking ban, which in turn prodded New York State to invoke a similar ban. This article mentions that the smoking ban has harmed New York City's restaurant, bar and convention business. The city's landmark theatrical business is hurting as well. Michael Bloomberg is a frothing anti-smoking zealot, and a generally arrogant, and mean-spirited man. Most people are basically good-natured. It really takes something to make them hate you. Bloomberg has got what it takes.
Although this story focuses on just one business it's the individual stories, rather than the financial statistics, that are so infuriated. One month after opening his pub, which he had spent thousands of dollars renovating, the owner was steamrolled by the smoking ban. Immediately 40 percent of his clientele took a three-mile hike to Pennsylvania where smoking is permitted. This, as we constantly reiterated, was not supposed to happen. Anti-tobacco operatives were quite clear in their promises to the politicians who abandoned common sense in order to placate the prohibitionists. Business would be better once the nasty smokers were thrown out. Now the businesses are lamenting the loss of the smokers while they wait in vain for the crowds to show up. It was a con game and the losers are the business owners and the populace in general which now must make up the tax revenue lost to the zealotry of a few loud mouths.
As we stumble over all those smokers heaving their guts out after smoking a cigarette, we marvel at the fertility of imagination exhibited by the pharmaceutical multi-nationals as they pursue their goal of bankrupting the cigarette manufacturers so that Big Drugs is the sole provider of nicotine and its byproducts. This time the miracle substance is the lowly metabolite of nicotine. Up until recently cotinine has been useful only in providing a marker to analyze the level of exposure to tobacco smoke. The pharmaceutical shills are now advising drug makers to check cotinine out or design new compounds based on its structure. Scientists have known for years that smoking helps prevent memory loss and brain disease. Rather than waste time waiting for Big Drugs to produce its artificial -- and undoubtedly expensive -- substitute, just keep on smoking or consider taking it up.
In 1998 46 state attorneys general ganged up on the tobacco industry and extracted $246-billion to reimburse the states for the costs of treating sick smokers. The money went to the states with no strings attached. The states, according to the agreement, can use the money any way they see fit. The tobacco control industry has spent the past five and hundreds of millions of dollars attempting to convince the public and the politicians that the settlement was enacted to provide anti-tobacco "education." The state legislators, more or less, have ignored the strident operatives and have spent the money on programs and issues their constituents deem important. Anti-tobacco special interests judge that the time is ripe to revisit the issue and rework it so that billions of dollars flow to them. John McCain takes a personal interest in the tobacco settlement and its aftermath. Prior to the 1998 agreement, McCain crafted a tobacco settlement that was firmly rejected by the U.S. Congress. His settlement would have given over one half trillion dollars to the states, the anti-tobacco lawyers and the tobacco control industry. So over the top was McCain's subservience to anti-tobacco interests that his colleagues refused to approve his legislation. Now anti-tobacco has summoned McCain to examine the settlement that was enacted between the states and the tobacco industry. Anti-tobacco hopes to alter the agreement or federalize it so that its interests outweigh those of the states. Needless to say, the smokers, who are paying the extant settlement and would pay for any larger settlement, have not been consulted by McCain and his anti-smoking senatorial buddies. Smokers don't donate huge sums to re-election campaigns. Thomas C. O’Brien, assistant general counsel to Corning Incorporated, provides a succinct definition of the current tobacco settlement: The 1998 tobacco settlement is a sophisticated, white-collar crime instigated by contingency fee lawyers in pursuit of unimaginable riches." "Not surprisingly, the object of the crime is money-$206 billion to the states and billions more to contingency fee lawyers." "The real victims are the people whom the states and their lawyers set out to protect-smokers, who get nothing out of the settlement yet must pay the entire cost." "Put bluntly, the MSA [Master Settlement Agreement] is illegal and unconstitutional. It is an agreement among the states that, without congressional approval, is specifically prohibited by the Commerce and Compacts Clauses of the Constitution." Time has not softened that assessment. In addition, doesn't Congress have more pressing matters to address? With American dying almost daily in Iraq and the economic recovery still tepid, now is not the time to drop everything and do the bidding of financially-motivated special interests. McCain and his patrons in the tobacco control industry have their nerve to be proposing that cash-strapped states and bled-dry smokers shuffle their diminishing dollars to rich "health" charities and pharmaceutical tobacco cessation peddlers.
Some may question the propriety of a tax-exempt organization advocating policies that veer awfully close to trashing the First Amendment but the Center for Science in the Public Interest has never been shy in undermining the American way. In its latest crusade to deprive people from consumer information, CSPI apes the tobacco control industry which continues its quest to muzzle all information about tobacco products. CSPI adds alcohol to its list of products that doesn't meet its approval. One hopes that the alcohol industry will stop wasting its time and money placating the fanatics and hire some aggressive lawyers who can make life miserable for the goons hoping to usher the country into a new age of Prohibition.
Cruz, 53, is a medical doctor who has spent most of his career as a public-health official. He is now in the middle of a fight to make Pierce County the first place in the state to ban smoking in all public places, including bars, bowling alleys and card rooms. Instead of support and encouragement, the only thing Cruz has gotten from the party is an icy shoulder. And instead of standing aside and letting the nomination fall where it may, Republican leaders have all but anointed another candidate, state Sen. Dino Rossi of Sammamish. Maybe the Republican Party in Washington State is wising up. There are too many Federico Cruzes active in the party that claims it wishes to reduce regulations and proclaims the sanctity of property rights. Banning smoking and raising the tobacco tax even higher has proven to be a loser in Washington. In a competitive gubernatorial race, no party needs a candidate that proposes policies that are guaranteed to hurt small businesses, reduce sales tax and business tax revenue. Federico Cruz is a voice from the past that is asking to be ignored.
If the Vanity Fair interview didn't get him in enough trouble, Mayor Bloomberg proceeded to defend his draconian laws banning smoking in virtually all public places by saying, "Think about all the press attention to September 11. . . . That number of people die every year in the city from secondhand smoke." Victims of the terror attacks were shocked at the mayor's comparison, which didn't even have the benefit of being true: The studies on which he based his statement have been discredited as junk science. Although we've concentrated on the jaw-dropping foolishness of New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg regarding smoking, it's important to note that this arrogant fool has managed to offend huge swaths of his constituency and even his political allies. So caught up in his hatred for smokers and obviously resentful of his predecessor's popularity, Bloomberg keeps digging himself into deeper holes.
However, national advocacy groups on both sides of a growing debate over smoking in public places are speaking out. A nonsmokers’ rights group is cheering the proposed ban while a smokers’ rights group says the ban would fuel a movement to end smoking in public and private housing throughout the Green Bay area. “If a product is legal, people should be permitted to use it. Since anti-tobacco chooses not to make (smoking) illegal, they live with the consequences,’’ says Norman Kjono, a spokesman for Fight Ordinances & Restrictions to Control & Eliminate Smoking. Seattle-based Kjono said Nicolet Terrace is only the third or fourth public housing facility in the country he’s aware of to consider a total smoking ban. He said anti-smoking groups ramped up efforts in U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department properties earlier this year as a way to attack the issue of secondhand smoke in all dwellings. Low-income housing complexes are easy targets because opponents have little money or influence to fight, Kjono said. Secondhand smoke "danger" is a joke that's turned sick. Anti-smoking spreads lies and social division. It is never satisfied. It plans to chase you out of offices and restaurants, into the sidewalks, off of those, into your house, out of there, and into jail. Because the federal Housing and Urban Development department finances all public housing, the legality of local anti-tobacco operatives pushing a ban in a complex is questionable. Moreover, the complaints against smoking have surfaced only recently and appear to be well rehearsed giving credence to the suspicion that public housing will be the next test "marketing" venue for expensive anti-smoking cessation devices. Nothing connected to anti-tobacco occurs without a financial angle attached. Moving beyond the moral outrage of terrorizing poor, elderly people with what is in effect eviction notices, it's mighty peculiar that more people don't notice a glaring discrepancy between anti-tobacco gospel and reality. If smoking is so bad and so damn deadly, how is it possible that there are enough old smokers still living in the complex to cause such horrific problems? With many of the "heavy smokers" in their eighties, this story gives the lie to anti-tobacco's sermons equating smoking with an early death.
A self-described "avid non-smoker," Steve Reder hates the smell and smoke of a smoldering butt. And now, he has an alternative for those who share his disdain. Since he has something to sell, it's a forgone conclusion that he will fail since "those who share his disdain" for smokers are a tiny fraction of the population. Although smokers may be a minority, it is a big minority comprising 25 to 30 percent of Americans. Anti-smokers are few and far between. Those who aren't on the tobacco control industry's payroll are even scarcer. Non-smokers don't disdain their friends, family and neighbors as does Steve Reder. Reder is president of QT 5 Inc., a manufacturer of water laced with 4 milligrams of nicotine. If he has his way, smokers would sip NicoWater and satisfy their craving for a cigarette, rather than lighting up. With this one fanatic we have the entire "anti-mentality". If Reder has his way smokers will give up their cigarettes in favor of his nicotine brew. Since coercion is the only method that could induce smokers to give up their smokes for over-priced water, "his way" cannot be actualized without an external force. Thankfully Reder is not a card-carrying member of tobacco control so his nico-juice venture will join the heap of business failures that litter the American landscape. The interesting part of this story concerns the history of the nicotine spiked water. It won't surprise anyone that goofball Reder didn't originate the concept. He is merely tagging along with a list of losers who have attempted to make money off smoker guilt. Marketing and distributing the water has been dogged every step of the way by the professionals in the tobacco control industry who do not want any competition for their own smoking cessation devices. The American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Cancer Physicians and the National Center for Tobacco-Free Kids have all complained to the Food and Drug Administration and have bombarded state legislators to remove the water from grocery store shelves. Fearing that teens would use the water to circumvent anti-smoking rules in schools, John L. Martin, a state senator from Maine, introduced legislation in his home state in June to ban the sale of the product. On the scale of buffoonery the state senator from Maine outweighs even anti-smoker Reder and demonstrates yet again that underestimating the intelligence of the American governing class is impossible.
Here we have some straightforward information mixed with "politically correct lite". The fact that, among the benefits of smoking there is also a strong evidence of protection from diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s is something that is as well known as it is withheld from the public by the media for our own good. Of course, even here we have some distortions of fact – because we can't tell the whole truth, for Pete’s sake! Concerning vasoconstriction, nothing is said of the fact that other chemicals inhaled with tobacco smoke are vasodilators and thus compensate for the constriction of blood vessels. However, vasoconstriction comes with all the nicotine substitution therapies (because they only carry nicotine), although it is mentioned only when cigarettes are discussed. The vasoconstriction effect is negligible for smoking – but conveniently failing to mention this is politically useful to the antismoking cons and their pharmaceutical benefactors. Considering the other side effects mentioned, you be the judge: how many smokers do you see in the street bent by cramps while vomiting? It seems that a strong effect of smoking abstinence can be seen in the selective memory loss of antismoking charlatans, especially when compounded by the effects of a strong intake of pharmaceutical money.
In the case of the Wall Street restaurant nothing can be done except lament the passing of a venerable institution, slaughtered by anti-tobacco. In the case of the Outback restaurant in Kirkland, Washington, passivity is not an option. Norman Kjono, a patron of both the Wall Street restaurant and the Outback, took some simple steps to rectify the sad situation of a restaurant loudly proclaiming a policy of hurtful exclusion. After contacting the restaurant and letting management know that intolerance is never acceptable, the glaring banner was removed. Smokers, however, are still not welcome, a policy that isn't embraced by the majority of Outback restaurants. Mr. Kjono kept his state representative apprised of these two situations where anti-tobacco bullying has foolishly been countenanced and even encouraged by politicians who are elected to represent the interest of all their constituents. A proponent of smoking bans and high tobacco taxes, his representative must face the consequences of her policies. Change is difficult and the first step, opening up to hearing different views, is hardest. Smokers, and all those who value true tolerance, owe it to themselves to get a dialog going between themselves and their leaders.
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