Mrs. MacPhail:

Recently you have given ample proof once again of your fanaticism against smoking, and you have lied on multiple counts to the people of British Columbia.

• You lie when you say that 5,800 British Columbians are dying from tobacco-related disease. This figure, rounded off by the anti-smoking press to a neat impressive 6,000, is a computer-generated figure which has virtually no connection with reality.
• Your figures about smokers' health care costs are a joke, and a vicious lie, just like the ones mentioned above.

You are trading on this inability to discern causality to imply that if smoking is eliminated, the diseases attributed to it will also be eliminated, and this is another misrepresentation of facts. They will simply continue because of other causes.

By the way, we recommend that you provide every smoker with an electron microscope in order to read the list of all "4,000 poisons" in a label covering 1/3 of a cigarette pack!

While there is no doubt that most of the antismoking arguments are junk science, there is ample evidence to sustain the following points, that can be proven to anyone who may still have some interested in truth and integrity:

1) It is false that smoking kills 40,000 Canadians (5,000, 5,800, 6,000 British Columbians) each year
2) It is false that second hand smoke (ETS) is a proven health danger
3) It is false that secondhand smoke is more dangerous than primary smoke
4) It is false that tobacco is more dangerous than drugs, alcohol, or car emissions
5) It is false that smokers are a financial burden on society
6) It is false that 50% of the people who start smoking die "prematurely", as the latest piece of televised anti-tobacco company hate propaganda by your ministry claims.

It is a well-known fact that the EPA report on second-hand smoke -- battlehorse of the antismoking propagandists -- is corrupted science. In fact, the entire project of smoking prohibitionism would not be supported if sound science were consulted in a clear-headed fashion. Instead, we are treated to a soup of ideological propaganda and emotional hysteria with scientific overtones in your ranting and media posturing.

The hysteria about smoking has been "bought as a package" from the United States, the greatest exporter of junk science and intolerance in the world, and it is motivated by hundreds of billions of dollars in financial returns from the exploitation of smokers in that country. Antismoking lies have a solid and proven financial motivation, and they constitute a clear and present danger to personal liberties and scientific integrity, which are the foundations for the next generation of citizens.

The adults and children you are professing to save in your antitobacco campaign deserve one thing above all: the truth. In your campaign of intolerance, you continuously fudge the facts, while bullying the federal government in the process. You are abusing the power of the state with an agenda influenced by special interest lobby groups which are financed by taxpayers money.

In fact, in a letter to one of our members (enclosed) you stated that 20 children a day start smoking in B.C. In that letter, you also have stated that your figure is "consistent with national calculations done by the Nonsmokers' Rights Association of Canada". You seem to be quite happy to accept as an authoritative source of information a shrill special interest group whose sole purpose is to spread intolerance of smoking, smokers and the tobacco industry -- I may add at the tune of millions of dollars of taxpayers' money between 1993 and 1997 -- while ignoring any dissenting voice. We are asked to be highly skeptical of what the tobacco companies tell us because of their special interest. This, however, does not apply to antismoking extremists like the ones you endorse.

As a formal question to you by our consumers group we would like to ask: how much of the B.C. government's antitobacco initiative is based on information supplied to you by the Nonsmokers' Rights Association of Canada?

It is most unfortunate for democracy that most of the press has decided to divulge and endorse your lies, while gagging the sound evidence and voice of opposition. No social cause is served when democratic dialogue is eliminated. Truly, the individual citizen or corporation is today powerless against the state. The smokescreen of lies, conflicting information, and greed has so negatively affected the credibility of the antismoking crowd, the original noble intention for a message of awareness has been lost. All that is left is hostility, social divisions, legal conflicts, and resentment.

The B.C. Health Ministry seems determined to help create intolerance for, and social marginalization of, smokers -- a category of people who are supporting your government with millions of dollars a day, and getting mistreated and lied to in return. Unfortunately, however, it is probably impossible to induce so much as a blush on this issue from a government that is so rapacious that it has been caught stealing money from charities.

We reject your lies, and will refuse to obey your directives.

On behalf of the members of my organization, I can say that we are proud to be smokers for our financial contribution to society, and for the jobs we create. It is unfortunate that our money ends up in the hands of the present B.C. government to be used against us. In fact, it is impossible to be against smoking without being against smokers.

The main function of a public servant in your position is to make sound and fair public policy based on factual information. Good public policy must also involve the consideration of different legitimate interests -- not just the interests with which one minister personally sympathizes. Your fanatical personal crusade makes you unfit to be a government minister. You should step down and become a temperance crusader, a role which seems to suit your particular talents.

Our organization will continue to fight you and the corrupted science you represent with all of our energy -- for giving up the fight now would mean surrendering integrity, honesty, and common sense.

Gian Turci,
president,
FORCES Canada