QUOTE FROM ARTICLE: ' One little sentence is all he gave to the most definitive analysis of smoking cost studies in existence. It grudgingly acknowledged only that, quote: A 1994 report by the Congressional Research Service noted that "smokers' early death leaves their Social Security and pension contributions unused and available to reduce future financing demands on non-smokers." '

FACTS: The CRS report reviews the methodology of smoking cost studies. Most importantly, it specifically exposes as fraudulent the OTA report which the state attorneys general cite as the basis of their Medicaid lawsuits. The same criticisms apply to their other prime source, the Centers for Disease Control's SAMMEC, and to Dorothy Rice's study as well.

COMMENTS: That little quote about "smokers' early death" is just the ideologically filtered, spin controlled, anti-smoker party line about what the CRS report ["Cigarette Taxes to Fund Health Care Reform," by Jane Gravelle and Dennis Zimmerman], says. It is such an incomplete and evasive description of this report that it qualifies as sheer lying.

Antismokers simply pretend that non-smokers' costs do not exist. There is no comparison of smokers' versus non-smokers' health costs. And they pretend that costs paid by smokers were paid by non-smokers. This is because by no means except overt fraud is it possible to pretend that smokers are an economic burden to society.

For example, the supposed excess costs of smoking amount to a mere 4.8% of Medicaid costs, according to anti-smoking demagogue Stanton Glantz (JAMA 1997 Mar 5). Meanwhile, nursing home costs, which are predominantly non-smokers' costs, account for 43% of Medicaid expenditures. But those nursing home costs are simply ignored.

To help to put over the Big Lie that smokers' illnesses cost other people money, this author attempts, via emotionally manipulative accounts of the suffering of individual smokers, to instill the delusion that only smokers suffer, while non-smokers presumably do not.

He also claims, "But federal and state health experts say such contentions [that "smoking saves the government money"] are farfetched and that the actual toll from smoking is much greater than the lost billions in Medicaid expense," citing the very same "expert" whose work has been debunked.

Dorothy Rice, "a medical economist who co-authored the 1994 CDC report on the cost of cigarette smoking," is quoted as saying of the settlement proposal that "It's a very small fraction of the total expense for tobacco-related illness. The $300 billion is totally inadequate to cover the costs."

Dorothy Rice is nothing less than a liar. She is deliberately deceiving the public that she is referring to actual economic costs they are paying, when she is really speaking of nothing but her own irrational FEELINGS.

This purported "expense" isn't anything that she or any other non-smoker pays in actual money; it's just her FEELING that smokers suffer so much (while non-smokers do not), therefore society suffers, so smokers should be charged for it. That's where her enormous imaginary sum comes from.

"These are real costs to the individuals," she explains, "except we can't quantify them." And then she appropriates these costs on behalf of others (i.e., society).

The morally depraved premise of Rice and her fellow anti-smokers is that smokers should be billed, in dollars and cents, for their own pain and suffering, while non-smokers are not billed for theirs. And they wish to pawn off this atrocity as an expression of their humanitarianism and concern for others -- except that these phony benefactors would never dream of applying such cruelty to THEMSELVES.

Imagine these bloodsuckers billing non-smokers for the latter's Alzheimer's disease, in dollars, under the pretence that society suffers financial harm from their personal misery, by rationalizing that "We can't quantify the pain and suffering of getting Alzheimer's disease because you didn't smoke."

So, that is the real nature of those supposedly "elusive" smoking costs!

Now, let's see the true story behind those settlement talks the media are so proud of themselves for engineering:

• First: the Centers for Disease Control and Office of Technology Assessment have deliberately, willfully, and knowingly created fraudulent smoking cost claims, and disseminated them to the states' departments of health, with the intent of inciting malicious lawsuits (as well as raising cigarette taxes under false pretences).
• Second: the media have been their active and willful accomplices, not journalists. They have eagerly disseminated those fraudulent claims, just as the author of this article has done, to promote these malicious lawsuits. Every single story about the Medicaid lawsuits has repeated the lie that they aim to "recoup," "recover," or "repay," etc., supposed smoking costs, when we owe them nothing. They owe us for subsidizing them. They have obstinately refused to publicize the truth, despite repeated efforts by our side to ensure their access to the evidence. The media have also refused to publicize the admission of the original OTA project director, Karl Kronebusch, that the OTA methodology is fraudulent.
• Third: the attorneys general have filed lawsuits based on those fraudulent smoking cost claims, falsely claiming economic damages when they have actually benefited, and when their states would suffer economic damages without smoking. They have persisted in pressing these lawsuits even after being informed of the truth, and moreover, have subsequently recruited more attorneys general to file more lawsuits, and by means of this abuse of their official powers, to force the tobacco industry to capitulate to what amounts to extortion.

And speaking of justice, it is time to put the anti-smokers industry on trial for conspiracy, fraud, and racketeering - with particular attention to the media, for their aggressive and instrumental role in this crime against the civil rights of millions of people.

Counterpoint by

Carol Thompson
Smokers' Rights Action Group
P.O. Box 259575
Madison, WI 53725-9575
Phone: 608-249-4568