ARTICLES FROM OTHER SOURCES

November 19 - Hair Trigger - A week ago some jokers on a Lexington Kentucky radio station flummoxed their listeners with an announcement that the county council had banned smoking in cars. City Hall was flooded with calls from angry citizens complaining about this latest meddling by the anti-smoking politicians. The volume of calls interrupted city business and overwhelmed the police department.

Although the radio story proved to be a hoax it is understandable that the residents believed the false report considering the anti-smoking fanaticism rampant in city hall. Two years ago the council imposed a California type smoking ban and the residents have been restless and discontented ever since.

Although the politicians initially vowed to complain to the FCC about the radio hoax they finally decided to accept a formal apology from the station owners. City Hall certainly won't be proposing any additional anti-smoker measures any time soon and the hints that the unpopular smoking ban might be altered may be followed up with action.

November 19 - We Have Ways Of Making You Stop - We don't call the anti-smokers Nazis for nothing. Adolf Hitler's anti-smoking policies were the prototype for what we're seeing today. This article by Michael Fitzpatrick reviews some of the parallels, and while smoking risks are often typically overstated here, it's always valuable to remind ourselves of the close kinship between today's anti-smoking technocrats and the fascists of the Third Reich. A small factual error in the article misidentifies a Nazi researcher as Franz Lickint (his first name was Fritz.) A greater error reports on the subject of "secondhand smoke" that, "Swedish toxicologist Robert Nilsson, while accepting the plausibility of the lung cancer link and the fact that numerous studies appear to show a statistically significant increase in risk, has questioned its epidemiological significance."

The simple fact is that passive smoking studies have overwhelmingly produced statistically insignificant results. As technically defined, statistically insignificant results are categorically exonerative, thus in producing such results, studies definitively render moot the perceived plausibility of linkage to disease, which initiated them. No study has ever given a practically significant indication of either good or ill from secondhand smoke. As a veteran critic of passive smoking studies Robert Nilsson is well aware of this.

Professor Nilsson has consistently decried bogus interpretations of "risk" and unprofessional bias amongst researchers, complaining that, "Because all tobacco smoke is seen as a major health risk, some scientists and physicians seem to have shelved their efforts to analyze the possible effects of passive smoking rigorously." Beyond this, Nilsson has famously revealed outright and deliberate misrepresentation of data by researchers, as in his response to the British Medical Journal's 1997 publication of the Wald study (of the always dubious "meta-analysis" type) which managed by prevarication to trump up a tiny 1.26 relative risk of lung cancer resulting from secondhand smoke exposure. Professor Nilsson specifically and scathingly debunked the study as a "statistical trick" of such transparent falsity that he suggested the BMJ editorial board must be "innocent of epidemiology" to have published it.

Nilsson explains in this article that, if one is to believe epidemiological consensus, eating Japanese sea food could produce 12 cases of cancer, eating mushrooms could produce 3 cases, and secondhand smoke could produce 2, while sunshine could produce 23, and "unknown" factors (the number one "cause" of cancer) could result in 177, all out of a population of 100,000 people. How plausible is that? Perhaps we should ban the eating of mushrooms in restaurants, but maybe permit this only in stand-alone bars, provided of course that the mushrooms are sold uncooked as "snacks." Or must we in fact close down all the restaurants and bars, while also banning every workplace, outdoors and wherever the sun can shine in? The always intrepid James Repace could tell us that curtains are no protection whatsoever and he could start a whole new movement to extinguish the hellish sun once and for all. Crazy liars, vicious vilifying propagandists, hateful technocratic tyrants. We don't call them Nazis for nothing.

November 18 - Smoking Ban Gets An 'A' - Performing its assigned role as government cheerleader the media is rushing out glowing reports of the Irish smoking ban right on the heels of the announcement that the United Kingdom will ban smoking in a few short years. Read this article and notice that paragraph after paragraph extols the smoking ban, painting a rosy picture of how happy the populace is that the Irish government forbids restaurateurs and pub owners from allowing smoking on their own property. Down near the bottom of the story some real news peeks forth from the happy froth.

Publicans are angry that drink sales are down, especially in those pubs that have no room to install heated patios. Business is down 25% in many establishments, proving once again that the hordes of nonsmokers eager to patronize "smokefree" pubs are as mythical as the link between secondhand smoke and health risks.

On an even more ominous tone the reporter notes, in passing, that drink sales are down because the government is seeking to reduce "excessive" alcohol consumption. Banning smoking is one way to effect this goal. The publicans will soon find out that banning smoking is only the first step taken on an agenda to drive them out of business. Higher alcohol taxes, mandatory drink limits and anti-alcohol campaigns are on the horizon.

November 18 - Satisfied Smokers - Proving that noting in this life escapes measurement and quantification the American Consumer Satisfaction Index reveals a big surprise:

Customer satisfaction with tobacco products is at a four-year high.

Who would have thought? Tobacco taxes are unrealistically high, smoking bans, although somewhat slowed down, are still a danger and the popular culture continues to debase and marginalize smokers. To top it off, Big Tobacco is still bent on disrespecting its customers in the vain hope it can curry favor with the tobaccophobes. The satisfaction compilers theorize that stressful times are conducive for comfort consumption and nothing beats the comfort of a cigarette, cigar or pipe.

November 17 - It's Good For You - Habitual, lifelong smokers face a 30- to 40-fold higher risk of contracting lung cancer than non-smokers. That sounds massive and many smokers are persuaded to quit because they believe it is. But, since the risk of lung cancer in non-smokers is minuscule it does not amount to an objectively high risk. The pro-smoking campaigner Joe Jackson argues "Even if you're a heavy smoker, your chances of NOT getting lung cancer are still more than 99 per cent." (Smoke Screen - Independent, Nov. 16, 2004)

Back in the dark days of the 1950's no one believed that smoking was good for you but neither was it believed that smoking was the font of all illness nor that smoking was a guaranteed ticket to an early grave. Society was more adult than in these enlightened times of panic and hysteria and people were encouraged and expected to make their own choices.

November 17 - It's For Your Own Good - All the talk these days about how the children are our most precious resource is sounding more and more hollow. Daily we read of children sent home, disciplined and even expelled for infractions such as taking an aspirin, drawing a soldier holding a gun or shouting politically incorrect insults. Although some of this craziness can be blamed upon suit-happy lawyers, most of the fault lies with school administrators who seem to have lost all ability to deal with human nature.

From Miami comes a shocking story of a six year old boy subdued by two police officers with the aid of 50,000 volts of electric current from a taser. Although the boy was misbehaving and there was a fear that he might hurt himself or others surely a less violent means of control could be found.

November 17 - A Trust Betrayed - Rob Reiner, best known as "Meathead", the loony left son-in-law in the classic "All In The Family", is a competent second tier movie director who had his share of minor hits. Like many dilatants possessed with a healthy sense of his own superiority, he developed political aspirations and began to troll the corridors of power in Sacramento buttonholing start-struck legislators, hoping to sell them on his pet cause of early childhood development. The politicians were willing to give him an ear but were reluctant to implement his plan of setting up a new bureaucracy to minister to the needs of every infant in California.

Undeterred by his failure to sell his scheme he launched a voter initiative to stick the bill for his progressive baby-rearing on the smokers. Barely winning a majority of the votes, the initiative passed in 1998. Since then the new bureaucracy has received 50 cents from each pack of cigarettes sold in the state. Billions of dollars have flowed to the unelected "activists" who run the childhood programs in every county. Run is the wrong verb, however, to describe how these programs operate, although "take the money and run." does come to mind.

The Los Angeles Daily News has examined Reiner's program in Los Angeles County and it concludes that hundreds of millions of dollars per year have financed a lot of salaries, a lot of meetings and a lot of travel but has come up with very little in actual benefits for the children of the county. After five years the program has yet to get its promised preschool program off the ground. The Daily News calls the failure of Reiner's program "spectacular."

Not much as been heard from Rob Reiner regarding his boondoggle but he has made noises about running for governor in 2006. With the state in hock to the tune of $15-billion terminating Reiner's personal playground won't solve all the financial problems but it would be good place to start.

November 15 - Pulling The Plug On Debate - As the United Kingdom embroils itself in the issue of whether to impose prohibition, a television broadcaster had an idea that the issue of secondhand smoke needed a good public airing so that the citizens can understand why the government needs to intrude into the nation's restaurants and pubs. A simple format was arranged where informed experts from both sides could make their case for or against secondhand smoke as a health risk. To the broadcaster's surprise and chagrin, anti-tobacco as a block refused to appear against the experts who say secondhand smoke poses no health risk. He may be surprised but we are not. Anti-tobacco, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the futile effort to nail secondhand smoke as a health hazard, is not about to appear in public in a forum where they would be asked to prove their case. Anti-tobacco loses by default and in reality lost the debate years ago. Their fear of facing the truth speaks volumes.

November 15 - Enjoy Nothing - We've become a nation of pill poppers. Not since those crazy days of the 1960's when housewives were popping uppers in the morning to lose weight then washing down valiums during the cocktail hour to calm down has the country been so enamored with over-the-counter and prescription drugs. Norman Kjono comments briefly about one more piece of the pharmacopeia regimen that will be hawked relentlessly on the nation's airwaves.

November 12 - Curbing The Trial Lawyers - Lost in the hoopla over the presidential election is the victory of California citizens over the rapacious tort lawyers. Passing by a comfortable margin, Proposition 64 closed a loophole that allowed trial attorneys to sue businesses even if they are not representing a victim or had identified actual harm. This initiative changed the law so that only people who are actually injured or have suffered loss due to an unfair business practice will be allowed to bring a suit under the state’s Business and Professions Code. It also limited lawsuits on behalf of the public to state and local Attorneys General and required that any monetary penalties that result from such suits be used exclusively to enforce consumer protection laws.

Under the old system a lawyer could file a file a suit against a business that manufactures or sells a product even if no person claims to have been harmed by the product. In practical terms most of the targets for these suits were small businesses often run by recent immigrants who have no money to contest a suit or who were intimidated by a, to them, inscrutable legal system. Rather than going to court the victims would end the suit by paying off the lawyer. Our favorite example of this shakedown was a Bay Area shyster whose specialty was filing suits against tiny Mom and Pop grocery stores claiming that the proprietors were selling cigarettes to minors. These establishments operate on tiny profit margins and are almost exclusively owned by immigrants. Although the inevitable "settlements" were fairly small, the shyster made a very good living. A thousand dollars here, three thousand there and before long you're talking real money. The cash was shuffled into a tax-exempt organization run by the shyster's mother.

The passage of Proposition 64 puts an end to this outrageous exploitation of hardworking taxpayers trying to make it in a new land. Congratulations to Californians. Let's hope that this tiny taste of tort reform proves addicting.

November 12 - Job Discrimination In The 21st Century - Of course it's everyone's dream, but now you'll have to take a lie detector test, if you want to become a sheriff's deputy in Tampa. Naturally your inquisitor won't dare to ask about the diversity or safety of your sexual indulgences.

He isn't concerned to know if you climb snow-capped peaks or ride the rapids on your own time. He won't be so grotesque as to inquire about your personal dietary habits, and alcoholics applying for the gun-toting jobs, are tactfully safe from questioning. Neither will you be asked if you've ever belonged to a certain political party or whether you practice witchcraft. Not this time. Why, those kinds of questions would be anti-progressive and puritanical, they'd be damned rude, they'd suggest the Sheriff's Department was practicing — could it be? — discrimination!

No, no, the Department is righteous, and righteously determined to "create a better public image for the sheriff's office and promote a healthier lifestyle for deputies." They only need to know if you smoke tobacco. If you do, ever anywhere or anytime, of course they'll boot your ass out the door. Now who would dare to question that?

November 12 - Discarded Sunflower Seed Results In A Hefty Fine - They don't suffer litterbugs lightly in Oklahoma City as one woman found out when she discarded one sunflower seed onto the roadway. An police office observing the heinous act wrote her out a ticket for $185. According to the police she got off easy since a first offence for littering can be result in a $200 fine.

Although reasonable people may differ with Okalahoma City officials as to whether such a fine is appropriate or even whether throwing one sunflower side onto the road constitutes a fining offence, the police assert that a city law change several years ago does make it a crime to throw a sunflower seed on the street. It's no secret that large American cities, after wasting taxpayers' dollars for generations, are taking advantage of every law, no matter how inane, to slap fines on the citizens so that empty city coffers can be replenished. Such governmental greed explains the growing push to fine smokers for throwing their butts into the gutters.

We present this photo of a soldier at the gates of Fallujah
not as a statement on the war in Iraq, although we certainly wish
the brave men and women there success and hope they will soon be home.

We ask that the viewer contemplate this man, snatching a moment from
a hellish situation, and ponder that he is in Iraq to bring peace and democracy
to a land that has never known it. He is risking his life so that they can be free.

When he returns to the United States he will be confronted with a land where,
in many places, he is not free to relax with a smoke at his welcome home dinner.

November 4 - Duluth Rejects Smoking Ban - Duluth has been subject to a controversial smoking ban for several years. By today's zero tolerance approach to liberty the Duluth smoking ban is fairly reasonable. Although it does shred property rights it does provide a modicum of choice for smokers and nonsmokers. When it went into effect the anti-tobacco operatives who had crafted the ban swore that their work was done and that they wouldn't return to toughen the ban. They lied. This time their lies were rejected.

Asked whether to install total prohibition, the good citizens of Duluth, by a healthy margin, said "Hell no." Despite all the money spent by groups such as the American Lung Association, despite the constant pro-ban coverage by the local rag and despite the "mountain of evidence" that secondhand smoke equals death, the citizens voted their self-interest and voted for liberty.

Dan Hass, president of FORCES-Duluth, is vigilant in bringing the facts about smoking ban to the business community. He is relentless in exposing the deceptions of the the rich and powerful anti-smoking organizations who have lied to the citizens of Duluth. His hard work was instrumental in this victory for common sense, common decency and freedom of choice.

November 4 - Smoking In Toledo - So worried was the anti-tobacco control industry about the repeal of Toledo's smoking ban that they persuaded Stanton Glantz, currently ensconced in luxurious surroundings at the University of California, to stump for prohibition in his home town. The anti-smoking conman give it his best shot and we are happy to report that it wasn't enough to save the wildly unpopular smoking ban.

By a healthy margin the citizens radically altered the total ban into something that approaches civility. From smoking banned everywhere now small business owners of bowling alleys, bingo parlors, restaurants and bars are again free to cater to their smoking customers desires.

"This is a vote from the blood, sweat, and tears of a lot of individual bar owners in Toledo. Now we have an ordinance that is a little more fair, that accommodates the interests of smokers and nonsmokers alike," said one jubilant bar owner.

The anti-tobacco operatives are crying the blues and consoling themselves that the voters really didn't know what they were doing. One theorizes that many people voting "Yes" to relax the total ban really thought they were voting to ban smoking. Such condescension is typical of a the type of person attracted to the anti philosophy.

Despite an avalanche of anti-tobacco propaganda from the vitriolic Toledo Blade the citizens made the right decision and they made it decisively against all odds. May such a retaking of freedom become the norm.

November 3 - Saving The Pub Owners From Themselves - The first signs of a business backlash against the Scottish Executive’s proposed smoking ban have emerged, with one of Scotland’s biggest finance firms believed to be selling off shares in a major pub chain.

Scotland's First Minister Jack McConnell is poised to impose a draconian smoking ban within weeks. McConnell endorses the opinion of anti-smoking advocates that the ban will serve to increase tavern business. Devastated tavern owners in other ban-oppressed areas cry out desperately to the contrary, but those of us uninvolved financially in the hospitality business, can afford to be open-minded. Of course it could be that smoking has been permitted in virtually every Scottish pub, by choice, for half a millennium, due to a massive misunderstanding of popular preference. It could be that drinkers are actually grim and abstemious persons, who all along have only wandered into pubs purely by mistake, when they were actually seeking the atmosphere of a puritanical health spa. The high proportion of smokers amongst barroom clientèle may for centuries have secretly wished to be greeted at their accustomed haunts, with the friendly phrase, "Get the hell out of here or I'll call the cops." Of course, all of that could be, but we'll have to await the advent of the ban to find out. What we do see, in anticipation of the ban, is that wise investors are getting the hell out of the Scottish bar business.

November 2 - Pull A Tooth, Forget The Past - "Teeth appear to be of the utmost importance to our memories," said Jan Bergdahl, a psychology professor at Umeaa University in Sweden, a dentist and an author of the study.

Although we are pleased, in a twisted sort of way, that Europe is now under the assault of the hyperactive grant junkies in this country who have been cranking out mountains of garbage masquerading as scientific studies, we have to shudder at the crudity of this dental/mental "study" coming from Sweden. Teeth as the protectors of memory? Perhaps these researchers into the mysteries of dental memory are reaching into their Viking past when energetic pillage and plunder were national policies and science consisted of a withered shaman advising an old crone that her inability to remember her grandchildren's names corresponds exactly to how few teeth they has left in her mouth.

This study is a laugh but when garbage like this is funded by the taxpayers it's no surprise that anti-tobacco "research", appearing to be much more sophisticated, is taken seriously.

November 1 - American Lung Association's Penchant For Wasting Taxpayer Money - Several years ago the Minnesota city of Duluth enacted a harsh smoking ban. Although it stopped slightly short of imposing total prohibition, the results have been disastrous for private business. Anti-tobacco promised that there would be no additional toughening of the ban but, as always, they lied and wrote a voter initiative to turn the screws tighter against the small business people who are trying to live under the current ban.

Adding insult to injury anti-tobacco, in the form of the American Lung Association, is complaining that those who oppose the initiative are spreading untruths. As Dan Hass, FORCES-Duluth, notes, the ALA can hardly accuse others of lying when its whole smoking ban agenda is comprised of nothing by a tissue of lies. Further, he asks, why is this political group receiving over $1-million of taxpayer dollars and using those funds to promote a political agenda?

November 1 - Calling All Anti-tobacco Lawyers - For months, Democratic candidate for governor Christine Gregoire has been warning her supporters that out-of-state interests were going to bankroll Republican Dino Rossi's campaign. But with the election now less than a week away, it's clear Gregoire is the one who is getting far more support from outside Washington.

We not surprised that anti-tobacco's favorite politician in Washington State is attempting to gloss over the out-of-state funding she receives for campaigning purposes. Nor are we shocked that she is lying about her opponent's out-of-state contributions. Ms. Gregoire is behaving as all creatures of anti-tobacco must; lie, deflect and smear.

Ms. Gregoire has danced to anti-tobacco's tune ever since 1998 when she shoved her way into the front of the pack of attorneys general making political hay by suing the tobacco industry. For affording her a prominent position in the tobacco settlement she has corrupted the state attorney general office by supporting illegal county smoking bans and approving anti-tobacco's deceptive language in a smoking ban initiative. Both of these policies have been nullified by the courts.

So demonstrably is Ms. Gregoire a creature of special interests, from mainly outside the state, that her election as governor is severely in doubt. Cashing in on anti-tobacco money may give her money to keep her faltering campaign afloat but cannot erase the cloud under which she now operates. Playing it straight with the voters and rejecting out-of-state money was the best course to take. Ms. Gregoire blew it.

November 1 - Controlling Academia - A Western Michigan University official said Tuesday that the school will not agree to a request from the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids that the school rescind its decision to honor Philip Morris USA Inc. as its employer of the year.

The issue is quite simple without the wild variable anti-tobacco throws into every subject. A major university examined American corporations and ranked them according to various criteria. One corporation placed first in the resulting list and the university plans to honor that company for being the "employer of the year". Because that company is Philip Morris, anti-tobacco attempted to subvert the entire process. Fortunately the university is standing firm.

November 1 - What Makes Them Tick - A few years ago we presented a touching poem written by a nonsmoking terminal patient confined to a hospice. In it she celebrated the camaraderie, warmth and good humor she found in the hospice's smoking lounge. She contrasted that lounge, always crowded, with the lounge where smoking was forbidden. That room was dark, lifeless and lonely. Nonsmokers preferred to be with the smokers, laughing, joking and commiserating with one and all. The poem was posted on the British Medical Journal website by the patient's brother, a physician who stated that he opposed smoking in hospitals but nonetheless found the poem "ironic."

While ironic is an adjective that hardly seem appropriate to the tone of the poem, it was probably the best this poor doctor could come up with, considering that he has been taught to regard smokers as miserable addicts hoping to be freed from the coils of tobacco. Smokers found the poem merely truthful, reflecting the reality that when people gather together, they flock around the smokers.

From smoking sections in airplanes to the kitchen or patio where smokers are relegated at social events, the hub of the party is always where the smokers are. Smokers know this and big-hearted nonsmokers, such as the hospice patient, recognize the phenomenon as well.

What didn't appear in our original posting was a comment made about this poem and the doctor's decision to post it at the BMJ website. We think it worthwhile to link to the poem again and ask readers to scroll down to the "Rapid Responses." One Ginny Lovell reaches deep into her soul, gathers up her bitter bile and flings a poisonous glob of it upon both the poem and the doctor who found it ironic. Her short message reveals all one needs to know about anti-smokers to understand what makes them tick. Instead of optimism, they drown in pessimism and negativity. Instead of joyful individuals they see fools. Instead of love they celebrate hate. Instead of hope they revel in fear. Instead of respect for others they work to enforce an orthodox conformity upon everyone. They are the anti people, anti life and anti happiness. Who could possibly want to spend their final days with Ginny Lovell?