We've all seen the horrible images of a tiny baby writhing in agony due to the horrors of cocaine withdrawal.  These babies begin life in terrible pain and face daunting obstacles to their development.  You have to have a heart of stone not to be moved by their plight and angered by the crack addicted mothers who bring their children into the world facing such odds.  Well, not to worry, claims anti-tobacco, it's tobacco, not the crack, that produces these pathetic babies.

To keep the grant dollars flowing, anti-tobacco dictates that every pathology must flow from tobacco.  Never mind that there are no quaking, damaged babies born from women who smoke tobacco but eschew cocaine and crack.  Never mind that the enormous baby-boom generation was conceived and born when a tobacco-smoking, pregnant mother was hardly a rarity.  Never mind that there never was a crack settlement nor is there a crack industry to rape.

By its nature, anti-tobacco cannot operate without duplicity but surely this study exonerating crack is a new low for a special interest group that is pure evil.

The obvious purpose of this report is to provide the reason to shuffles wads of cash to leftist women's organizations who then return the favor by endorsing political candidates who pledge to fund the war on smoking.  The pattern was set in California a decade ago when a special tobacco tax generated millions of dollars that found their way into the upturned palms of left-wing "community" advocacy groups.  Having bought "community support", anti-tobacco then pushed for smoking bans and other tobacco control measures.  Now that their support is no longer needed, the tobacco tax is no longer dispersed to the community pressure groups but is funneled exclusively to the anti-tobacco enterprise.

Less obviously, this report has been released, along with a multitude of other junk, to bolster the drive to take tobacco settlement money away from the people and give it to the special interest groups.  Leaving aside the question whether the tobacco settlement is illegal, its provisions clearly authorize the states to do with the money what they wish.  In a democracy that means that the elected officials are charged with dispensing the funds.  Anti-tobacco has been screaming for two years that it should be getting the majority of the settlement money.  Anti-tobacco will be waving this report to all the state legislatures as proof that education on tobacco is sorely needed and who better to provide it than anti-tobacco?

The biased media covered this study uncritically as usual but in some of the coverage little tidbits of actual information pop up.  In this story from the San Francisco Chronicle, the reporter quotes a 19-year-old woman who started smoking at age 12.  Since age 9 this woman has been a recipient of the most intense anti-tobacco propaganda in history and yet she started smoking.  The reporter would actually be earning his salary if he reported that prior to anti-tobacco education practically no 12-year-old, boy or girl, would dream of smoking.  One legacy of anti-tobacco is that its efforts have lowered dramatically the age when kids start smoking.  It's an accomplishment that the tobacco companies never could have equaled.

WHERE ARE THE HEADLINES? - Added March 29 - Presumably distracted by the campaign to genderize the war on tobacco, the health hysterics in the media somehow missed some good news for smokers.  According to a study from the Netherlands smokers are no more likely to miss work because of respiratory problems than are non-smokers.

"Absence with respiratory complaints was not associated with age, height, body mass index, or smoking."

Every once in a while good news about smoking is uncovered.  The most spectacular was the World Health Organization's massive study that exonerated secondhand smoke as a health risk.  The media didn't report that study either.  Like Stanton Glantz who won't do a study unless it is guaranteed to produce the results backing up his political agenda, the media will not highlight any good news about smoking.  Glantz' biases are understandable since fortunes are being made producing anti-tobacco junk studies but the media is supposed to inform the citizens.  When the media report a recycled study that claims smoking causes wrinkles and miss a study that is good news for society but bad news for anti-tobacco the concept of "free" press becomes meaningless.

One aspect of the settlement that hasn't attracted much notice is a provision that essentially authorizes the four big tobacco companies that participate in the settlement to fix prices which non-participating tobacco companies cannot undercut.  This provision was enshrined in each state whereby non-participating cigarette manufacturers must sell their products at the same price charged by the big four even though the small companies owe no settlement payments to the states.  The amount that would have gone to the state had the small companies participated is placed in state escrow accounts.

Such a provision means that the big four participating companies are now state-sanctioned monopolies.  Yet another corruption of the legal and political system by anti-tobacco.

Star Scientific plans to appeal and based on comments by the judge it won't be wasting its time in doing so.  In addition to continuing its action against the settlement, the company is also working on a cigarette it claims is safer.  If true, it is ironic that the same special interests who claim to be so concerned with health threw up huge roadblocks to that goal.

Building on that corruption of the language, the Centers for Disease Control soon began referring to gun violence and accidents as epidemics and health risks.  The drive to subordinate the Second Amendment to the dictates of Public Health is well under way just as smoking evolved from an innocuous pleasure with well-known risks to a personal behavior controlled by an elite that wants to stamp out personal choices. 

It didn't take long for anti-gun activist medical professionals to incorporate the anti-tobacco techniques utilized for years.  Every smoker now expects lectures, overblown scare tactics and constant nagging from doctors.  Soon your doctor will include gun ownership in the rapidly growing list of "health risks" that must be eliminated.

Jacob Sullum, a perspicacious observer of anti-tobacco coercion, takes issue with the advocates who wish to insert gun ownership issues into medical care.  This excellent article spells out the anti-gun doctors' motives and questions just why doctors should be considered experts on every activity that can cause injury.

Rush Limbaugh for years has been reassuring the public but his entertaining and informative comments from last week's show are available right now.  Check out his website, listen to his comments and enjoy his verbal jousts with those who believe personal freedom ends where cigarettes begin.

"They're [smoke-ban freaks] really not New Yorkers," LoBaido said. "The beauty of New York is it's imperfection.  "That's part of the romance of this town," he said. "Hey, this isn't L.A."

Great story from the Staten Island Advance about a cross section of New Yorkers marching on city hall to protest Council Speaker Peter Vallone's scheme to turn their city into a vertical Santa Monica.  This time the plan to impose a California-type smoking ban on New York is not going as planned.  Citizens and politicians realize that the secondhand smoke scar is a scam with no basis in reality.

The one sour note from this event comes from an American Cancer Society goon who tells the reporter that secondhand smoke kills 53,000 Americans per year.  It's obvious that he is lying since to date absolutely no evidence exits on the planet that secondhand smoke has killed even one individual.  Generally unknown is the tidbit that the goon's figure comes from the perpetually discredited Stanton Glantz, the mechanical engineer turned anti-tobacco grant junkie extraordinaire.  So outrageous is Glantz' estimate that even the Environmental Protection Agency rejected it.

Through persistence and  tenacity Wanda Hamilton exposed the American Cancer Society's deceptive use of the 53,000.  Read it.  It isn't pretty.

Assembly Bill 1453 does the following:

Like all good liberals and progressives, Koretz, endows inanimate objects with potent power to which human will is subservient.  The smoking ban in bars is at risk if a match appears upon a bar stool.  Smoking will erupt in a nursery school if an ashtray is in view.  Like a witch doctor, Koretz believes that non-compliance with the smoking ban will disappear when the accoutrements of smoking is eliminated.  One wonders why his proposed law doesn't require an armed guard to frisk customers for tobacco products.

The second provision is in line with Koretz' deep admiration for the Nazi Regime of Adolph Hitler.  Responsible for enacting the first housing discrimination law in decades, Koretz now wants to eliminate smokers from society by making it illegal to light up anywhere children might be expected to show up.  Since children may appear on public streets, parks, private homes, national parks, beaches and almost anywhere, smoking will be banned everywhere as well.

Paul Koretz is well on his way to transforming himself from merely a very creepy member of the state assembly to the most repulsive politician of a state filled with some of the most repugnant politicians on the planet.

Last week the Supreme Court refused to hear a suit brought by anti-tobacco special interest over the diversion of funds allocated for anti-tobacco education under the anti-smoking education tobacco tax, also known as Proposition 99.  The tax increase, passed in 1988 by the citizens of California, was primarily sold as a way to fund health care for smokers who were supposedly made ill by cigarettes.  Kept quiet was the main purpose of the tax increase which was to provide millions of dollars to the anti-tobacco enterprise to reduce smoking.

Proposition 99 was the gold mine that propelled anti-tobacco to the position in society that it enjoys today.  Within a few years the money collected was spent demonizing smokers, pressuring state legislators and buying the support of hundreds of left-wing advocacy groups.  After an initial decrease in smoking rates, now attributed to smokers buying their smokes out of state, rates for adults stabilized and are now on the rise.  Underage smoking, however, skyrocketed to rates unheard of before the saturation of anti-smoking propaganda.

Although the tax imposed by Proposition 99 allocates set percentages of the take to various purposes, including anti-smoking education, the law also provides for the legislature to change the percentages when necessary.  In the early 1990's while California was suffering through a severe recession the legislature and two governors took money away from the anti-tobacco education and funneled it into actual health care for the poor.

One would think the legislature had used to money to set up whore houses judging from the cries of outrage issuing from the grant junkies and non-profit "health" organizations.  The American Cancer Society, Lung and Heart Association took out full page ads in the New York Times castigating the legislature and governor for using tax dollars to provide health care for the poor.  A gang of anti-tobacco goons also filed suit attempting to halt the diversion.

Over the years the suit has wended its way through the courts.  In one decision the goons prevailed but later that win was reversed by a higher court.  The California economy recovered and the funds were again allocated to anti-tobacco education but the vitriol heaped upon the state's elected officials has not been forgotten by a legislature and governor who have been cowed by anti-tobacco's viciousness.  No group of people detests Proposition 99 and its rabid supporters more than the state legislature.  No politician happily accepts the situation where tax dollars are out of its reach.

With the Supreme Court's refusal to revisit the case, the legislature is free to divert funds from anti-tobacco education without the threat of a law suit.  Of course the grant junkies and Body Parts organizations will still squawk but the moral high ground will be with the legislature.  Over time Proposition 99 will be dismantled and eliminated.  It is the job of the citizens to make that process happen as quickly as possible.

The real reason the attorneys general are targeting the race track signs is that they have nothing but contempt for the people who are fans of car racing.  The people who know all the names of the Winston Cup drivers do not worship at the altar of public health.  They eat too much, they drink too much and they certainly smoke too much.  The Surgeon General would be booed at the races and the attorney generals would be reviled for the pointy-headed geeks that they are.

On a legal level, RJR and the other participants to the settlement didn't lose their constitutional rights even if they did attempt to sign them away.  The attorneys general are guilty of filing a nuisance suit and RJR should tell them to go to hell.  Its customers would.

From Belgium comes a story of a professor who has published a theory in the Lancet medical journal that the Queen of Denmark is responsible for countless and needless deaths among her female subjects.  It seems Queen Margrethe, the beloved monarch, is an unabashed smoker whose wanton ways are leading her countrywoman astray or as the professor says:

"As a role model for women, the queen's example could offer an explanation for the unusual mortality in Danish women. Although the negative effect of the Queen's behaviour could be expected to impact on both sexes, it is plausible to assume a greater impact on women. The question arises as to whether Queen Margrethe's behaviour could be a risk factor for population health in Denmark."

There is more insane verbiage but the real absurdity is that an anti-tobacco maniac was given money, most likely provided by the taxpayers of the European Union -- the outraged Danes included -- to develop a lunatic theory that despite all standards found its way into a supposedly respectable medical journal.  For the laughs it was worth every euro.  

Demanding high fees because they were taking "risks", firms billed up to $200,000 per hour in states like Florida and Maryland where the legislature actually did all the work by passing laws to nullify the tobacco industries' legal defenses.  In many states the law firms that were selected to pursue the suits were those that had friends or relatives in high places.

With billions of ill-gotten loot, the lawyers have shuffled huge sums to Democrat politicians and also to the party itself.  They backed the failed presidential quest of Al Gore as insurance payments that tort reform will not be enacted.

Fortunately for the country Al Gore lost and George Bush won.  The president has now begun the long, tortuous process of bringing some sanity to the American legal system.

A Good Tobacco Tax briefly discusses a provision in Bush's budget that will make the lawyers squawk and also explains why the huge fees are out of line with traditional practices.

For a more detailed look at the role lawyers played in the state tobacco suits and also a point by point blueprint to stick it to other industries, take a look at Can Tort Law Be Ethical?

Adding to the lawyers woes, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce takes aim at the massive fees and is calling on Congress to conduct an investigation.  The chamber has used the Freedom of Information Act to request information from 21 states.

The momentum is building to rein in the predatory practices of a profession that long ago traded in ethics for piles of cash.

HE'S DOWN FOR THE COUNT - Added March 13 - Edward Sweda is a big time anti-tobacco lawyer who makes a very good living shoveling you-know-what.  Lately his shoveling has been so frenetic that he has shoveled himself into an ever widening hole that threatens to swallow him up.  For reasons unknown, Sweda has been let off the anti-tobacco reservation to make embarrassing forays into the real world where he is encountering real people who don't follow his script.  

• In January he accepted a challenge from a Massachusetts woman to back up his claims that secondhand smoke poses health hazards.  He wasn't able to do so.
  

• We next find Sweda attempting to rebut a woman from California who demolished one of anti-tobacco's biggest lies.  He wasn't able to do so.
  

• Yesterday Sweda gives it the old college try and revisits the original challenge by the woman from Massachusetts.  As usual he fills several paragraphs attacking the tobacco industry but again he's shooting blanks.
  

• To befuddle him further, yet another woman from Massachusetts weighs in on the lack of proof or credible evidence that secondhand smoke poses any health risks.

Poor Ed.  Despite his credentials, despite the unlimited resources at his fingertips, despite all the help from his anti-tobacco comrades, three woman with no letters or universities to string after their names are pummeling this tough lawyer silly.  He must feel like a ping pong ball careening from one well-placed swat into the splat of another well-aimed paddle.  He better give it up before the big boys who run anti-tobacco start questioning his prowess. 

Millions in milk-consuming countries have the intractable, debilitating, torturous Crohn's disease. It's a mushrooming epidemic."

It could be a screed about tobacco but this time it's about milk.  The tone of hysteria, the complete lack of any proof and the weird respect given by the media have been seen before.  It will only get worse as North America succumbs to hysterical hypochondria.  Look out dairymen, your on the list.

If not concern over the health risks supposedly posed by secondhand smoke, what then is the rationalization to ban smoking in restaurants and bars?  Sidney Zion doesn't answer that question but point by point he shatters any pretense that the prohibitionists are acting out of concern for the health of workers and customers.  From the EPA ETS report, to the WHO study and ending up with a study from the Department of Energy, there is no evidence to the contention that secondhand smoke is dangerous.  Since there is no proof, Peter Vallone and his allies on the city council owe New York City an explanation.

As always, anti-tobacco lied.  What for years they have denied is now in print:

This timeline is from something called the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University School of Law.  Lest one regard the above as the ravings of a bunch of ivory tower lunatics consider that the financial backers of the Tobacco Products Liability Project include the U.S. government, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (Johnson & Johnson Drug Company).

Smoking tobacco, of course, will never be eliminated.  People will be smoking long after Northeastern University School of Law is forgotten.  The timeline to end smoking will meet the same fate as Adolph Hitler's dream of a thousand year Reich but the insane drive of implementing it has the potential of wreaking havoc unless decent people demand that this madness end now and the perpetrators be brought to justice.

For those interested, the above timeline is in Section 4.2 of the Tobacco Products Liability Projects' Action Plan.

NANNY STATE IS OUT OF CONTROL - Added March 10 - "There is, of course, not the slightest evidence that any nonsmoker has ever been injured, or so much as a single adolescent ever become addicted to tobacco, by virtue of the minuscule quantities of tobacco smoke that may exist in the breezes that waft through America’s public parks. But foes of tobacco are immune to the normal rules of argumentation; their sheer rectitude exempts them from the ordinary requirements of proof." By William Rusher - Idaho Press.

NEBRASKA SAYS NO TO PROHIBITION - Added March 9 - The state legislature resoundingly killed a bill that that would have severely curtailed the right of businesses to set smoking policies in their restaurants and bars.  The 29 to 19 vote to oppose the bill is a big defeat for the anti-tobacco enterprise's goal of enacting a California-type ban although operatives vowed to bring it up again.

Debate centered upon both the financial ruin that smoking bans bring as well as issues of freedom and the rights of owners to control their businesses.  Those legislators favoring the ban were upfront in their dim opinion of the ability of people to choose which establishments to patronize and the ability of the market place to satisfy the overwhelming majority of people.

This victory marks a change in the discussion of smoking bans.  The supposed health risks are beginning to take second place to concerns that over zealous ideologues are willing to undermine the country's traditions to push narrow agendas.

TOBACCO FANATICS FACING A TOUGH SELL - Added March 9 - By a narrow vote, Oxford, Ohio snuffed out a proposal to enact a smoking ban.  The mayor of the city who proposed the ban says the matter will most likely not be reintroduced this year.  Concerns focused primarily on the financial hardships that will befall coffee shops and restaurants.

The anti-tobacco enterprise has inundated the Midwest with aggressive lobbying efforts to turn that region of tough individuals into another California.  So far the anti-tobacco operatives have had little success although flush with pharmaceutical money they will continue their efforts until politicians realize that the proponents of smoking bans are directed by organizations headquartered on the two coasts that have little support from the locals.

The story notes that the American Lung Association is sending goons out to picket restaurants that don't adhere to the smoking policies it dictates.  There is a word for a so-called charity that takes government money, doesn't pay taxes and tries to ruin legal businesses run by tax-payers.  That word is thug and those who object to describing the anti-tobacco cartel as criminal are willfully hiding their heads in the sand.

Rogers, described as a smoking ban proponent on the New Bedford city web site, supports banning smoking in the city's restaurants and as a state representative filed legislation that would have banned smoking in all restaurants operating in Massachusetts.  Said Rogers, "This [ETS] is a health menace, for restaurant patrons and for employees."

Last month Alfred Muller, mayor of Friendship Heights, MD and ardent smoking ban advocate, was arrested for allegedly molesting a 14-year-old boy.  That case has yet to come to trial.  A study should be immediately commissioned to determine whether anti-tobacco advocacy causes pedophilia, along with its other well-known disorders, or whether pedophiles tend to be prohibitionists.  Get those junk-grant requests ready!

OUTDOOR BAN STRUCK DOWN - Added March 7 - A Maryland circuit court judge struck down the outdoor smoking ban enacted by the village of Friendship Heights earlier this year.  His ruling is not one that is pleasing to civil libertarians.  Because Friendship Heights is a special taxing district rather than a true municipality, the law prohibiting smoking on the sidewalks and in the parks oversteps the village's authority.  Had Friendship Heights been an actual city it's anyone's guess how the judge would have ruled.  

Going farther, the judge praised the intention of the law saying, "The effort of the Friendship Heights Special Taxing District to protect its citizens and others from a significant health risk is admirable.  There is little question about the serious and detrimental effects of tobacco in our society."

Those who wonder why the general populace has developed a profound antipathy to the American justice system need only contemplate a judge who apparently believes that a wisp of tobacco smoke wafting through streets filled with exhaust-spewing automobiles is a "significant health risk".  Such sentiments would have been greeted by incredulous guffaws not too long ago.

For the mayor of Friendship Heights, Alfred Muller, who was the individual most responsible for the outdoor smoking ban, this court decision is one down and one more to go.  Shortly after his law went into effect, Mayor Muller was arrested for groping a 14-year-old boy in the men's room at the National Cathedral in nearby Washington, DC.  The mayor has pleaded not guilty to the charge and a trial will be held later this year.

In a statement that tops even the judge's fuzzy platitudes about health risks, Muller expresses the hope that his law banning outdoor smoking and his charge of child molestation "aren't continually linked.  It really makes it difficult to perform my duties."

That the people of Friendship Heights haven't booted the erring mayor out of office for bringing international ridicule and spectacular embarrassment onto their village is proof that people get the representation that they deserve.

Indeed the push to ban smoking Montrose, Colorado does not originate in town.  The American Lung, American Heart Associations as well as their front groups are the only voices lifted to impose a law that tramples property rights.  These special interest groups placed an initiative on the April 3 municipal ballot and hope to buy the election with their non-profit, not-for-lobbying money.  The odds are good that anti-tobacco will win this round, but it appears that a good portion of the citizens of Montrose are facing the real issue of smoking bans.  The bans are an unjustified intrusion into the operation of private businesses.  The restaurants that will be affected should the ban pass are not "public" places.  They are PRIVATE property into which the public may CHOOSE to enter.

Speaker Peter Vallone and his sidekick, councilman Stanley Michels, reneged on a promise made to the citizens of New York that the 1995 smoking ban was a far as the nonsense would go.  Since 1995 the Environmental Protection Agency's secondhand smoke report has been vacated by a federal judge and the largest secondhand smoke study, conducted by the World Health Organization, concluded that there is no evidence that secondhand smoke poses any health hazards.  More important, millions of American citizens are now aware that anti-tobacco has cooked the books in its attempt to regulate behavior.

 AMERICAN TOBACCO COMPANIES WIN MARSHALL ISLANDS CASE - Added March 3 - Radio Australia reports that "American tobacco companies have won a major victory in the Marshall Islands with the High Court throwing out a multi-billion dollar suit brought by the government. The dismissal centered on the legal requirement that the Government's attorneys produce evidence showing the Marshall Islands had incurred special or additional medical expenses or costs due to smoking-related diseases."

As always, when political corruption does not infiltrate the legal structure, only one possible truth emerges: it is not possible to prove that even one of the diseases "attributed" to tobacco is caused by it, thus it is impossible to assess the "extra" medical expenditures, if any. The fundamental shift of public health towards systematic political and ethical corruption, and systematic misrepresentation of health-related information, represents a terrible danger for all -- non smokers included. We believe it is the duty of all of us to fight this endemic form of crime, which is quickly eroding the fabric of society as we know it. Being disgusted is not enough. It is time to take action.

Pointing Fingers - Added March 2 - Sounds almost like the "Nazi Youth Corps"! Actually they were called "Hitler Youth" and the "League of German Girls" and the Fuhrer exhorted them to not smoke by barraging them with cartoons and posters that would disparage those who were not of pure German descent. "Hitler Youth" and the "League of German Girls" regularly put on plays depicting smoking as an evil plot against "The Aryan Race." They all took "no-smoking pledges" for the Fuhrer. Most ended up smoking.