Two Smokers' Rights Activists Speak Out - Bob Speck, president of Hawaii Smokers' Rights and Dave Pickrell, president of Smokers Fighting Discrimination, Inc. are two of the many Americans who diligently bring their energy and commitment to the fight for fairness. Unlike the professional anti-smokers, whose large salaries are provided either directly or indirectly by taxpayers, these two activists are unpaid and devote their time to this cause because they love their country and won't sit idly by while those who hate the principles on which this country was founded work for America's destruction.

Youth Appeal - Is Internet voodoo seducing toddlers and college students into the evils of tobacco and alcohol? We link to the pages of Reason magazine for a thoughtful dissection of comic frogs and other Threats to Our Youth. - By Jacob Sullum

Addicted To Health - "When moral self-righteousness, greed for money, and political ambition work hand in hand they produce irrational, but almost irresistible, policies. The latest example is the war on cigarettes and cigarette smokers. A proposed settlement has been negotiated among politicians, plaintiffs' lawyers, and the tobacco industry. The only interests left out of the negotiations were smokers', who will be ordered to pay enormous sums with no return other than the deprivation of their own choices and pleasures." - By Robert H. Bork, from National Review

Blowing Smoke - Columnist Dave Barry on the US tobacco settlement: "It requires the parents of adolescents to put on giant pants, shave their heads and get their noses pierced, then smoke cigarettes in front of their kids while making statements such as: 'smoking is cool, dude!' This will cause the adolescents to join strict religious orders." We link to the pages of the Miami Herald.

Warning: Anti-Tobacco Crusades Can Damage Your Life - These days, arguments for freedom and individuality are mostly coming from the right, but not always. We link to the pages of the British magazine Living Marxism. "The implication that people are incapable of deciding for themselves what is good or bad for them, and that some external public agency has a greater responsibility for an individual's behavior than the individual himself, simply degrades the individual in relation to society." - By Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick

Singapore's Antismoking Blues - The little city-state of Singapore is tightening the rules against smoking, obviously influenced by the false evidence coming from North America. But the more they tighten the rules, the more the smoking issue slips through their fingers. Paradoxically, 25 years of anti-smoking measures have helped fatten the earnings of tobacco companies, and smokers are still there in the same number, and more. The local government has long banned any form of tobacco advertising.

Jeanne Calment Is Dead - She lived in France. She was a documented 122 years old. The oldest person in the world. "As a teen she'd seen the Eiffel Tower reach its heights. She'd met the artist Vincent Van Gosh who'd bought paint from her uncle." She was a smoker who smoked for over 100 years, and she quit at the age of 120 because she could not see well enough to light up. Good thing she did not live in Canada, or United States. Her death would have been logged as tobacco-related death, and added to the book of lies. - We link to the Calgary Sun. Article by Rick Bell.

Canada: The Stupidity Of Tobacco Control And Over-taxation: Smugglers Go Interprovincial - "The federal government's sustained attack against the smuggling of contraband cigarettes into Canada has created a new multimillion-dollar crime problem." " British Columbia, where cigarette prices are among the highest in Canada, has been particularly hurt by the growth of interprovincial smuggling. Profits are so high it has attracted different organized-crime elements who are starting to fight among themselves for dominant positions in the trade." The price of the New Prohibition is beginning to be felt. Crime, and waste of federal enforcement resources are just the first symptoms. From the Globe And Mail

An Inoffensive Movie Is A Rare Thing, Indeed - We link to the Los Angeles Times for an article on the latest interference in the freedom of expression of the White House, where matriarch Hillary Clinton is most active in her moralistic campaign to promote the frauds about the "dangers" of smoking, attacking even actors who impersonate characters who smoke, and attempting to divert the public's attention from the moral disintegration of her country, and the marital troubles of her husband. - Article by Robin Abcarian

Smoking Is Personal, Not Political - Two Libertarian letters sent to local BC newspapers, and re-published on West Coast Libertarian, the newsletter of the West Coast Libertarian Foundation in Vancouver. These letters illustrate very well the Libertarian position on smoking.

Forces, Turci, And Our Right To Smoke - West Coast Libertarian report on a speech given by Gian Turci, president of FORCES Canada, at a recent Supper Club meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Clinton's Dream Dies a Dirty Death - The disillusionment of a British journalist who thought highly of Bill Clinton. Now he says: "It was with a profound sense of disillusionment and eventually anger, therefore, that I watched as the man I had thought represented my generation emerged as one of the worst examples of the old ways."... "What made this especially galling was that I had identified so closely with Clinton and his people. Now I found he was just another sleazy politician and I was becoming just another cynical journalist." When will North American people realize that there are no great men anymore -- not in politics, anyway? Why do they always fall for the same lies? Indeed, having allowed the antismoking scum to go this far, we are forced to agree with James Adams from the Sunday Times.

Raise The Tax On Alcohol, Not Cigarettes! - A short article by Rosalind Marimont, criticizing the cigarette tax increase in the US, and slashing once again the anti-smokers' propaganda about the dangers of smoking. "Before 1988 only intoxicants were considered addictive," Rosalind says, "but since then the Anti Smokers Propagandists have wiped out the distinction. Ask yourself, would you feel safer if your pilot had had 3 cigarettes or 3 martinis before taking off?"

Smokers Fights Back - A letter sent to the Tampa Tribune by Olga Colado, president of Tampa Smokers' Rights Alliance.

This Plan Won't Stop Smokers - "The strategy in the war against smoking is apparently based on invalid assumptions. Antismoking strategists assume that if advertising is restricted and prices increased, smoking will decline. A recent analysis by the Center for the Study of American Business, however, offers convincing evidence to the contrary." By Jerry Heaster from Kansas City's The Star

Tears For Glantz - A reader sends us a wonderfully written article on Stanton Glantz, the tiresome antismoking "guru", whose devastating study on the "no economic consequences" of smoking bans on hospitality business was recently debunked by a world level economist. This time, good ol' Glantz proposes nothing less than nationalizing the tobacco industry... any relationship to the BC pocket-picking NPD government?

FDA Actions Threaten Civil Liberties - By Jerry Taylor - Jerry Taylor is director of natural resource studies at the Cato Institute. "..Nor is there a shred of evidence to suggest that advertising causes kids to smoke. Not the Canadian Supreme Court in 1995 the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in 1994, the U.S. Surgeon General in 1989, or anybody else has ever been able to unearth such evidence in their reviews of the published literature. Countries that have totally banned all tobacco advertising—like Norway—still have teen-age smoking rates higher than in the United States."