Koop & Kessler Refuse To Testify Under Oath: We Are Not Surprised - Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and former Food and Drugs Commissioner David (mental) Kessler last Wednesday abruptly cancelled their congressional testimony on legislation to regulate tobacco scheduled for the following Thursday morning after learning that they would be required to testify under oath. Well, we are all quite aware of the real reasons why these two won't testify under oath. The shoddy science they promote is simply not truthful. We certainly would be willing to testify under oath and we are sure you would, too. But it is clear that K&K share an interesting trait with other criminals -- the ability to sense fear and exploit it for personal gain. We have one good thing to say, though: at least these two still respect the oath, differently from another former Surgeon General during the Florida Trial. (Article by David E. Rosenbaum Objecting to Oath, 2 Smoking Foes Cancel Testimony, New York Times, March 5, 1998)

Enough Already About Smoking - More and more mainstream media is getting disgusted by the lurid persecution of smokers. On March 3rd, Mike Barnicle, Boston Globe Staff, writes: "...However, it's weird to realize more people show up for a smoking-ban meeting than appear forparent-teacher nights at public schools. Tell voters it's about tobacco and they arrive in droves; tell them it's about registering convicted perverts and they stay home to watch TV." Read the full article inside.

Miami: Promoting Hate, Intolerance, and Intimidation of Smokers - Keep Your Hands Off Our Young! - A Hitler Youth-style brainwashing is beginning in Miami, Florida, with the money extorted from the tobacco industry -- and smokers -- in the infamous Florida settlement. Young people will be instigated to harass, intimidate, and attack smoking and smokers with the help of an advertising company who stands to make many million dollars from this disgusting enterprise. Article from the Sun-Sentinel in South Florida.

Smoking Fictions - "The smoking debate consists heavily of fictions. Awkward facts are ignored or minimized; dubious assumptions, often clearly false, are advanced as solid truths. Genuine debate is stifled by two propositions: that the tobacco companies are evil beyond belief, and that no measure should be spared to stop teen smoking." - Article by Robert J. Samuelson - The Washington Post

Antis Vs. Antis in a Putrid Display of Lies and Misinformation - The severe split of the anti-smokers' movement on the issue of tobacco company legal immunity clearly displays the stomach-turning filth that is going on in the antismoking field. Here the rabidly antismoking Coalition for Workers' Health Care Funds, siding with the American Lung Association, the gang of C. Everett Koop and mental case David A. Kessler, attacks the rabidly antismoking Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids. Notice they use the same lurid approach used against anybody who opposes them from the side of liberty and choice: the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids is a front for the tobacco industry! Like 1930's Chicago gangsters, these people spare no hits against each other in the battle over the loot.

The "Science" Behind Smoking Bans - As resistance against the smoking ban builds up in California, The antismoking cartel is trying to explain it by accusing the tobacco industry to instigate resistance, while conveniently forgetting that there is still a considerable amount of population that consider freedom of choice more important than profitable lies about secondhand smoke. The American Cancer Society, splendid example of quintessential ethical and political corruption, is "appalled". Well, we are appalled that these individuals are still walking the streets as free people. Article by Joseph Perking, The San Diego-Union Tribune.

George Will Turns a Jaundiced Eye on the Tobacco Wars - "If smoking is as dreadful as is said by those who advocate stiff new tobacco taxes, the ideal revenue yield from the taxes would be zero. But that thought is considered impertinent by the governments that are becoming dependent partners of the tobacco empire in the continuing extraction of huge sums from smokers, who come disproportionately from the low-income population." We link to the Washington Post for a column by George Will.

Snuffing Out Property Rights - "The political left has never favored private property rights anyway, and the political right has abandoned them intentionally to avoid concessions favoring private personal freedom." By Dan Litwin, member of the Libertarian Party

Lies and Consequences - "What I call a lie is the conscious effort to make something seem what it is not. This can mean outright untruths or calculated distortions, omissions and qualifications. The intent remains the same: to deceive. A small incident recounted in my 1993 column convinced me that Clinton is a compulsive liar."

"I am a D.A.R.E. kid, Here's My Diploma, I'd Like to Report on My Parents" - The informants: in a drug program, some kids turn in their own parents - The U.S. DARE drug "education" program is dividing some communities over the issue of child police informants. One child who approached police with information now "says that as result of her experience, she doesn't 'trust any adult outside of my parents' and 'gets scared' whenever police drive by the house." We link to the Men's Issues Page for a report by Joseph Periera, originally published in The Wall Street Journal.

What Worries Americans Most About Their Children - Ask American adults to name the most serious problems facing children, and one answer overwhelms the rest: drugs. Crime and the breakdown of the family rank a distant second and third, respectively. "...smoking didn't even make it onto the list," said Ruby H. Hearn, senior vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which funded the survey. "The public agenda as revealed in the survey is much narrower than we think it needs to be." So much for the political fanfare of the money-grabbing antis.

Tobacco Taxes Pay for Antis' Smoke Screen - California smokers are forced to pay for anti-smoking messages being shown in Los Angeles Theaters. The message: "You could . . . get arrested, and lose your job, and your wife would leave you, and she'd write a book about you and . . . it would get made into a movie" Link to FORCES Georgia.

Anti-smokers Become Less Timid about Nazi "Medicine" - The Sunday Telegraph has recently reported that Robert Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Pennsylvania State University has "discovered a research" conducted by Dr. Karl Astell, a powerful SS officer and anti-Semite, at the Institute for Tobacco Hazard Research based at Jena University in Eastern Germany. Of course, local newspapers report the news with ample space, fanfare, and no criticism. The antismoking bastards reveal their true colors in this one.

Trying To Avoid The Inevitable - "... a young person said these very words: 'How come they stick us in this uncomfortable glass cage because we smoke and right across the aisle in a nice bar people are getting drunk? I guess it’s all about profit but I still think American has got its priorities screwed up.' What do you tell the youth of America?"

Smoking Jackets - One learned commentator on a recent study of youth and tobacco promotional items calls such an item "a pathogen." As Jacob Sullum points out, "Cigarette promotional items, of course, aren't bacteria. They are a form of speech that offends many people--including, apparently, the researchers who did this study and the editor of the journal that published it." From the pages of Reason Magazine.

New U.S. Super-Maximum Security Prisons: The Closest Thing to Torture - In "Throwing Away the Key", Peter Finn from the Washington Post Service describes the new maximum security prisons built in Virginia. The indomitable faith in "the tougher the better" motto, coupled with the inability to deal with social problems other than with repression, has earned to the US the sad record of being the country with the greatest percentage of its population behind bars. "For the segregated prisoners, there will be no group activities, no educational or vocational programs, no television and no sports. Some of them also may be denied reading material. When visitors are allowed, they will not be permitted to touch the prisoners; even the most secure of Virginia's current prisons allow an embrace at the beginning and end of a visit."

New Crimes Created to Control the American Public - North America is choking on a diet of needless laws addressing trivial issues. Unimaginative politicians are ignoring the people's business by catering to the biggest collection of thieves and demagogues this country has ever produced. Never has public policy been so dictated by such useless parasites as the anti-smoker cabal calls the shots from the state house to the White House. FORCES member Enoch Ludlow has some thoughts on the proliferation and true intent of America's love affair with control.