January 30 - I'd Rather Smoke Than Kiss - Today when I see the truculent, joyless faces of anti-tobacco Puritans, I remember those easy-going smoking sessions with that man: the click of the lighter, the brief orange glow in the darkness, the ashtray between us—spilling sometimes because we laughed so much together that the bed shook.

A cigarette ad I remember from my childhood said: "One of life's great pleasures is smoking. Camels give you all of the enjoyment of choice tobaccos. Is enjoyment good for you? You just bet it is." My sentiments exactly. I believe life should be savored rather than lengthened, and I am ready to fight the misanthropes among us who are trying to make me switch.

A misanthrope is someone who hates people. Hatred of smokers is the most popular form of closet misanthropy in America today. Smokists don't hate the sin, they hate the sinner, and they don't care who knows it.

This smoker's perspective, published in National Review several years ago, is as pertinent as ever. Just compound her comments about the hate campaign against smokers by a factor of ten or so. As the article's author makes crystal clear, however, smokers never cared what fools thought of them. Today, in fact, that silly cigarette between your fingers has astoundingly become a beacon of liberty and tolerance. Only the dumb viciousness of modern anti-smoking could have made it so.

Florence King doesn't concentrate here on the scientific fraud surrounding secondhand smoke, although she does acknowledge its hazards are invented.  What she does so well is expose the pretensions and inferiority complexes of the anti-smoker.  From grubbing social climbers to the insecure upper class she knows them all and nails the S.O.B.'s succinctly and devastatingly.

January 26 - Canadian content at WHO - The fascist Lalonde doctrine, which is at the foundations of the equally fascist and paternalistic philosophy of "public health" today is superbly analyzed in this essay by Dr. Luik. Long ago, "public health" decided that it no longer needed to be constrained by obstacles such as science, integrity, ethics, and respect of individual choice and constitutional freedoms. That conning the public into the belief that science was behind its wacko affirmations was a legitimate means more to achieve the ultimate, collective socialist dream -- this time dressed in white coats: leveling the life of each to a minimum, common denominator. 

"Lalonde realized that if lifestyle medicine and with it prevention were to succeed, two things had to happen. First, Canadians had to move from their view about their right to live their lives as they pleased to one in which they acknowledged a moral obligation to accept their society’s norm of healthy behaviour, even if this meant abandoning some of life’s pleasures. Second, the health establishment  had to speak with one, clear, authoritative voice, preferably if not a government voice at least a government-sanctioned voice about the dangers of certain lifestyles. This meant that lifestyle change had to be vigourously promoted even if the science supporting such changes was incomplete, ambiguous and divided."  

This cancer is gone a long way from Canada, and now it is all over the world. Those who dissent are attacked, slandered, ostracised and punished, their studies forgotten or never published. There can be no dissent in any dictatorship to begin with; but where scum dressed in white coats is concerned, we are looking at a new definition of absolute.

January 16 - Sheela Basrur, junk science and phantom risks - "You would have thought that between SARS and the looming return of West Nile that Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health would have a fairly full plate. But the good doctor appears to never let real health risks get in the way of the important work of her unit- using junk science to stamp out phantom risks. So last Monday while the numbers of SARS deaths continued to grow Dr. Basrur and the Board of Health ran an eight hour meeting devoted to the hugely important health risk of, yes, Designated Smoking Rooms (DSR’s are fully enclosed and separately ventilated spaces where smoking in bars and restaurants is permitted.)"

January 20 - I'm Lighting Up To Fight  City's Anti-smoking Gestapo - It was only whilst reading the Star's editorial page on the weekend — a grim exercise but good for the odd cackle — that I learned this is National Non-Smoking Week.  That merits firing up a dart right there.

[S]moking, while not technically illegal — that is to say, sale and possession of the product is not illegal (yet) — is most definitely a vice in Western society, barely less objectionable than pederasty or mainlining heroin at one's primary workstation, hence the crunching vise of ever-more invasive and radical anti-smoking diktats, bylaws and un-laws inflicted on a huge puffing minority by a bossy bunch of nico-Nazis and health fascists who happen to have the ear of government. Indeed, increasingly, they are the government, at its most officious, arbitrary and zero-tolerance mantra worst.

What might be done with extremists who claimed genetics proved they were the master race? What might be done with alarmists who claimed epidemiology proved AIDS carriers spread diseases casually in the workplace? Look at what has been done with this "secondhand smoke peril" lie. Footnoted lies — what Toronto Star editorialist Rosie Dimanno and others now conventionally call "junk science" — are the tools of hate mongers. Dimanno calls this era's anti-smoking activists "nico-Nazis and health fascists." What should be done with them? At the least, and at the start, fanatical anti-smokers must be vocally and forcefully condemned. Rabid prohibitionism infects today's public health establishments, and through them, our governments. The situation is entrenched via cigarette taxation up to seven hundred per cent, money robbed from smokers, then used to vilify and ostracize them. Debunking of secondhand smoke lies is treated as sacrilege by health cultists, as if it were akin, to denial of the Hitlerian Holocaust. The health cultists are themselves Hitlerian.

"Secondhand smoke" from burning tobacco, a leaf, is no more dangerous than the smokes and smells produced by cooking dinner. The plain truth is, immoderate cigarette smoking, like immoderate eating or alcohol consumption, carries risk. For instance, Yul Brynner reported he smoked four packs a day, and the actor died at age 70, amongst the distinctly small minority of cigarette smokers who die of lung cancer. Like the vast majority of cigarette smokers, Frank Sinatra did not get lung cancer, but lived until old age caught up with him at 82. He smoked his trademark cigarettes till the end. Heavy drinker and smoker Humphrey Bogart died of esophageal cancer at 57 but his widow Lauren Bacall, who also indulges, turns an active 80 this year. Cigar smoker George Burns lived to 100, despite an expressed love of martinis, and a sardonic disdain for vegetables. Most smokers live typical life spans, either longer or shorter, as is the case for everybody. Genes are the main works in the clock. Health regimens may extend life but there is no guarantee. These famous smokers are typical humans. They made their own choices. 

Free choice, the bedrock of personal dignity, is what today's health cultists will not abide. That is why their movement is profoundly disturbing, regarding not only smokers' crazed harassment, but the very decency of modern civilization. Vicious extremism becomes the norm when hateful movements are too long overlooked by the people at large. Major media have been sorely remiss in failing to recognize the ugly face of today's anti-smoking movement. For far too long reporters and editors have parroted its sick propaganda. Awareness is growing and more and more decent people, including journalists, are speaking up. Today, possession of an unused ash tray stored in a closet at a New York City place of business, is a crime. Such laws may become grim memories in a year that cannot come too soon. We must fight to make that happen. Whether you smoke or don't, recognize the importance, of battling fanaticism. The nature of the thing is evil, it keeps popping up in various forms through history, and it pervades without end in every direction whenever left unchecked. This is the most righteous of wars.