TOBACCO NEWS FROM CANADA

Comments by Warren Klass President, FORCES - Canada

Additional Canadian News

Dateline Toronto, Ontario

May 30 - It’s been a while and a lot has gone on in my life in the past few months. I burned out as the president of Forces Canada. There have also been a lot of personal issues within my life that I’d rather not get into here.  Forces was kind enough to allow me the freedom to write the occasional opinion column, without the grind of running Forces Canada. I needed a break.

Believe me over the past few months I was very tempted to share my opinions with the loyal readers of Forces, and I was really touched by the outpouring of support from many of you who told me how my efforts were appreciated.

I was recently a guest on 640 Radio call-in show in Toronto for an hour during the morning rush hour. I’ve done the show before a couple of times. I’ve done other call-in shows, so I am pretty sure what to expect. In this case the host, although a non-smoker, is very suspicious of the claims of the anti-smoking hyenas. A sympathetic host makes all the difference in these live call-in shows.

I was invited to on the show to discuss the recent passing of Heather Crowe. I repeated on the show what I’ve said here many times that I consider the whole Heather Crowe saga to be: THE BLOOD-LIBEL OF CANADIAN LIBERALISM.

What do I mean by that statement? Without being overly pedantic, a Blood-Libel is a charge of murder, without one iota of evidence, designed to stir up hatred-with the requisite grandiose self-serving rationalization for some grandiose social-engineering agenda

I stated on the show:

“Why did tons of Ontario’s lawyers turn down Heather Crowe’s attempt to sue the tobacco companies for supposedly getting lung cancer from second-hand smoke? Its one thing to try a case in a court of law where the rules of evidence apply. It’s another thing to start a Blood-Libel in the Canadian media.  A Blood-Libel is designed for stirring up hatred.”

The first call I responded to was some guy with the spiel: ”My mother was a heavy smoker and died of lung cancer at 49, blah, blah, blah…”

My response was: ”My father-in-law died of cirrhosis of the liver. He was a heavy drinker. Should we ban drinking?

“BUT THAT’S DIFFERENT”, he said.

“How exactly is it any different? This should be good.”

“Well it is different?”

I made my point. The caller could not explain to the vast audience what was so different. Then I counter-attacked:

“Do we ban drinking because someone died of cirrhosis of the liver?

“No,” he replied, ”but that’s different.

“What are we supposed to do? Take an axe to demon rum, and go back to prohibition because my father-in-law died of cirrhosis of the liver? This entire argument is ridiculous.”

Next call.

“Although you are technically correct there is no empirical evidence linking smoking to blah, blah, blah, there is compelling statistical evidence that is almost as good, blah, blah, blah, science going back to Galileo blah, blah, blah,”

“Do you have ANYTHING remotely approaching empirical evidence to bring to the discussion, or are you here to read off your Master’s thesis?”

Next calls involved some guy who claimed that his emphysema was caused by second-hand smoke. I responded that this was ridiculous. There are thousands of causes of asthma, which late in life can become emphysema. I further pointed out to listeners that lung cancer in non-smokers has 40 causes, heart disease has 300 causes. The punch line about second-hand smoke is you have to be around about 1 million cigarettes per hour in a seal non-ventilated room to hit threshold levels.

Next call: a “guilty smoker” who never smokes around her kids and welcomes smoking bans, FOR THE CHILDREN, blah, blah, blah.

I responded that Dr. Fernando Martinez, who originally authored the part of the later, VACATED (92 page U.S. Federal Court Judgment that declared claims made by the EPA null and void) the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s claims about second-hand smoke and asthma in children. Martinez now believes it’s the hyper-sterile environment, including smoking bans that is causing an asthma epidemic through “lazy-lung.”

Next call:

Finally a sympathetic caller was allowed to be heard. A guy called-in with the thought that Heather Crowe’s claims were ridiculous. He mentioned you could see a huge brown haze when you land in the summer at Pearson (Toronto International Airport for those unaware of the landmarks in The Center of the Universe.) I mentioned to the audience that Heather Crowe was not the first time tobacco has been set-up as a political whipping boy. I informed listeners that on the Forces site, www.forces.org years earlier we re-posted a story from London’s Independent newspaper about Cabinet decisions of the McMillan government circa mid 1950s that had to be made pubic by British law after 50 years.

“It seems that in the mid 1950s the McMillan government had to explain an epidemic of lung cancer. They were given a choice of whom they blamed. The coal fired electricity plants or smoking? Guess who got blamed?”

I further mentioned Dana Reeves and Andy Kaufman both died of lung cancer without smoking or ever being around smokers.

By co-incidence I happened to be in Toronto last weekend for a family re-union. I realize I have not always been kind to Toronto in this forum. I have to confess it. Toronto is a beautiful city. Toronto’s beauty is man made unlike the Vancouver’s and San Francisco's, which are naturally beautiful cities.

Waking around Toronto – in Winnipeg time – and riding the subways I was struck by how such a beautiful city outlawed all fun and replaced it with endless Trotskyism edicts imposed on the masses under the most spurious pretexts.

I looked up an old high school/University friend who had moved “to the center of the Universe” in the mid 70s. He took my girlfriend Cathy and myself out to lunch at BCE Place. We had to eat indoors. The patios were too jammed with smokers.

He told us when he has to leave Toronto for business in the rest of Canada he always tells people he is from Winnipeg. If he told people he was from Toronto he is immediately hated.

I can’t imagine why. The Torontonians we encounter were for the most part nice, polite fellow Canadians.

The hatred comes from the political legacy they imposed on their fellow citizens of our home and native land.