CONCEALED EVIDENCE
This letter, written by Carol Thompson of the Smokers' Rights Action Group to H. H. Kaplan, Administrative Judge of the State of Maryland, cuts to the bone of the matter, exposing the frauds of the antismoking industry with unprecedented, relentless precision and detail. A powerful reading.
Carol Thompson 3-12-97
Smokers' Rights Action Group
P.O. Box 259575
Madison, WI 53725-9575
RE: STATE OF MARYLAND v. PHILIP MORRIS INC., et al.
Case No. 96122017/CL211487
SUBJECT: CONCEALED EVIDENCE
TO: Joseph H. H. Kaplan, Administrative Judge
It has become obvious that those who supposedly share smokers' interests
in winning the Medicaid lawsuits are grossly failing to defend themselves, and
thereby us.
The tobacco industry has never contested the libel that smokers' health
costs are an economic burden to society. They merely offer that cigarette
taxes cover the alleged costs, and quibble over peripheral issues without
challenging their foundation.
Their lawyers dither about the costs of people who eat Twinkies; they
fuss over whether the states can use private attorneys; they obfuscate that
the state of Florida once had inmates making cigarettes; and they proclaim
that "cigarettes are a legal product," as if it's not obvious from the FDA's
recent actions that the anti-smokers are more than willing to make them
illegal by fiat, without bothering to get Congressional approval.
Tobacco representatives have told citizen smokers' rights activists not
to bother reading the CRS report because it's "big and complicated." They've
boasted to the press that the Medicaid lawsuits will drag on and on, and cost
the taxpayers millions of dollars, when they could have stopped them already,
or better yet, prevented them in the first place, by debunking the smoking
cost libel.
We wonder if the tobacco lawyers are either incompetent or secretly
serving the anti-smokers. We suspect they don't care if they win, because
they can just pass on the costs of any phony "damages" they are forced to pay,
to us smokers. The Bloomberg News Service quoted analyst Gary Black: "Higher
prices -- not bankruptcy -- would flow from a sharp increase in legal
expenses." They noted that a $6 billion per year payoff could be funded by a
25 cent per pack price increase. (The Washington Times 1997 Tue Feb 18, pp B6,
B8.)
We smokers do not think that this is fair, because we are not an economic
burden at all.
We think the tobacco industry clings to the delusion that they can
appease or buy off the anti-smokers, with our money, despite 30 years of
increasingly extortionate demands. The Bloomberg News Service reported:
"But a week ago, BAT CEO Martin Broughton said a settlement made sense.
`They want a big payoff, and we want a peaceful life,' he said."
As if we don't know from experience that the anti-smokers would simply
accuse the tobacco industry of some breach as an excuse for breaking their own
word and resuming their attacks, just as Hitler did. They would no more honour
any supposed settlement, than they have been content with deals for non-
smoking sections in restaurants. They fully intend to grab everything, piece
by piece.
The same Bloomberg News Service report tells us: "There have been
discussions as far as settlements," Chris de Witt, spokesman for the Michigan
Attorney General's office. "Members of the staff have been involved."
The tobacco industry is selling smokers down the river, and would subject
society to a higher tax burden as well, and nobody is representing either of
our interests in these Medicaid lawsuits. This crucial evidence has been
concealed by both the plaintiffs and the defendants, to both our detriments.
We hope that the judge is able and to willing to order this concealed
evidence into the official record of this case, as Palm Beach Circuit Judge
Harold Cohen has done in the Florida case, so that it may be considered in the
disposition of this case.
As his ostensible justification for filing this lawsuit against the
tobacco industry, Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, Jr. claims that:
"Over many years, the State of Maryland has paid billions of dollars in
medical assistance for smoking-related health care costs, which would not have
been incurred but for Defendants' misconduct. Defendants created an ongoing
public health crisis of unrivalled proportions, all the while knowing and
appreciating that the State of Maryland would be required to cover health care
costs for its indigent and needy citizens with smoking-related illnesses." (2)
"Defendants knew and expected that their actions would require the State
to pay higher health care costs for citizens of Maryland requiring public
assistance." (194, 202, 209)
"The State of Maryland, rather than Defendants, bore the financial burden
of paying the increased health care costs caused by Defendants' fraudulent and
wrongful conduct, thereby conferring benefits on Defendants [!!!] by, _inter
alia_ satisfying their legal duties [!!!] and saving them from bearing the
costs for harm proximately caused by their fraudulent and wrongful conduct."
(212)
"Defendants knew of and appreciated the benefits that the State's payment
of increased health care costs conferred on them." (213)
"It was foreseeable to Defendants that their design, manufacture, and the
marketing and sale of the tobacco products would cause injury to the State of
Maryland because the State would incur increased health care costs." (261)
He repeatedly contends that the State has been economically harmed by
smoking. The State is in fact an economic beneficiary of smoking. It has
saved money, not lost money, as a result of smoking. The economic burden on
the State would be greater, not less, if there were no smoking.
The Congressional Research Service of the US Library of Congress in 1994
issued a report reviewing the methodology of studies of smoking costs. It
exposes the fraudulent methodology used by the OTA, which is explicitly cited
by the Attorney General: "The impact of cigarette smoking on the national
economy is staggering. In May of 1993, the Office of Technology Assessment
advised the United States Congress that in 1990, smoking-related illnesses
cost United States taxpayers a total of approximately $50 billion in direct
health care costs, $68 billion in indirect costs for morbidity, and $40.3
billion in direct costs for mortality." (12)
He also claims that "The State of Maryland bears a proportionately large
share of this human and economic impact" and that "the direct medical costs
related to smoking in Maryland equalled approximately $800 million." (13)
The original project director of the OTA report, Karl Kronebusch, has
freely admitted on Wisconsin Public Radio that its cost claim is bogus. The
methodology of the Centres for Disease Control's SAMMEC is likewise
fraudulent.
For over ten years, various anti-smoking agencies and their media
accomplices have deliberately disseminated the libel that smoking is an
economic burden, for the express purpose of inciting these malicious Medicaid
lawsuits against the tobacco industry.
They have obstinately refused to mention the findings of the CRS report
or other valid studies, and have suppressed public discussion of the
methodology of smoking cost studies, because even schoolchildren could see
through the sham the anti-smokers commit. They simply pretend that, if
smoking causes x percent of certain illnesses, then x percent of the costs of
those illnesses would be "saved" if they didn't smoke.
They conveniently overlook the fact that non-smokers also cost money for
whatever illnesses they suffer from or die of, and they incur costs for extra
years. When the lifetime costs of non-smokers are compared with those of
smokers, non-smokers' costs are higher.
In addition, they falsely claim as costs to society, expenses which were
paid by smokers themselves.
Also, all studies to date have failed to consider non-smokers' 40% higher
risk of Alzheimer's disease at a given age, besides greater odds of living to
very old age. The prevalence of dementia in the late 70s, when average
smokers die, is about 6%. By about age 85, when average non-smokers die, the
prevalence has risen to around 25%.
Dementia is the major cause of nursing home costs. Medicaid happens to
be the primary payer of nursing home costs, with over half of the total
national spending, which is particularly relevant to these lawsuits. Nursing
home costs are 43% of all Medicaid costs in Wisconsin, an average state.
In comparison, the pretended smoking-related costs are only 4.8% of
Medicaid expenditures nationally (according to leading anti-smoking demagogue
Stanton Glantz, JAMA 1997 Mar 5). It means that the Medicaid program is a
massive subsidy of non-smokers by smokers - the exact opposite of the
deceitful picture Attorney General Curran paints. Those supposed "costs"
actually represent savings.
We faxed the Attorney General a copy of the CRS Technical Appendix, but
he chose to ignore it. His assistant attorney Peter G Angelos also received
this. It can properly be said that `Plaintiffs knew of and appreciated the
benefits that the decreased health care costs of smoking conferred on them.'
They have thus filed a malicious lawsuit, founded on methodologically
fraudulent smoking cost estimates. They are using deceit to pretend that the
state has suffered economic damages, and that it is entitled to file suit for
compensation.
This lawsuit is therefore a knowing attempt to extort money under false
pretences, an outrageous abuse of power. By colluding with other attorneys
general, whom we have also informed of the facts and who have likewise ignored
them, the Attorney General and his assistant are also engaged in conspiracy.
The media, including the Associated Press, have also been informed of the
CRS report. We have written numerous "letters to the editor," and faxed the
offices of the Associated Press repeatedly, yet their misconduct continues.
By continuing to use terms like "reimbursement," or its equally dishonest
kin, "recovery" and "restitution", the media are deliberately misrepresenting
the true nature of these Medicaid lawsuits. It is obvious that it has been
their intent from the beginning to incite these malicious lawsuits, in their
own plot to injure the tobacco industry by extorting phony "damages" from
them (which smokers would actually be forced to pay).
And, by deceiving the public about the nature of the Medicaid lawsuits,
they intend to create a climate of lynching, where the opinions of the public
whom they have deceived would be outraged if the tobacco companies were not
forced to pay.
Frankly, we are not certain of the tobacco industry's ability to defend
itself. We believe that the bullying and racketeering tactics of the anti-
smokers have deprived them of the services of able scientists. They have
failed to defend themselves against easily-refutable accusations, either
publicly or to smokers' rights activists.
We would like to present evidence that it is the anti-smokers, not the
tobacco industry, who have systematically deceived the public about the health
risks of smoking. We have enclosed copies of the studies in support of our
positions, which are summarized here, along with comments on the Attorney
General's complaint.
ANTI-SMOKER DECEIT
The so-called "health scares" of the 1950s and 1960s scarcely made a
dent in smoking. The tobacco industry's fears at the time turned out to be
unwarranted, as only a small proportion of smokers were concerned enough to
quit, and relatively few people were dissuaded from smoking.
This was not due to ignorance, nor because the TIRC et al "lull[ed] the
public into a false sense of security," nor because they "concealed,
undermined, and distorted information coming from the scientific and medical
community." (60)
The public's overwhelming belief in anti-smoking propaganda has been
documented by the anti-smokers themselves (1989 Surgeon General report, Ch 4).
People merely exercised their own judgment and refused to consider smoking
"dangerous" on anti-smoker command.
However, as a result of their failure to stampede people away from
smoking with the threat of lung and other cancer, it was the anti-smokers
themselves who embarked on a systematic campaign of fraud, deceit, and
epidemiologic malpractice to falsely blame smoking for disease it does not
cause.
The claim by the Centres for Disease Control that "each year cigarette
smoking kills more than 400,000 Americans" ought to be challenged head on.
(10)
The majority of those supposed deaths are from cardiovascular disease.
But the anti-smoking establishment has been stonewalling and/or misleading the
public about the implications of recent research implicating Helicobacter
pylori and Chlamydia pneumoniae infection as causes of heart disease. They
have falsely blamed smoking for heart disease actually caused by these
bacteria.
The mechanism by which this was done is clearest for Helicobacter pylori.
The lower socioeconomic groups are more likely to be infected, and infection
virtually always occurs in very early childhood, before people become smokers.
Smokers are more likely to be from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and hence
are more likely to be infected.
By the same means, the anti-smokers inflated the numbers of supposed
"smoking-related" deaths with 50,000 passive smokers, who, like the smokers
they are exposed to, are more likely to be from a lower socioeconomic
background than non-exposed non-smokers.
The anti-smokers are not entitled to keep pretending that their claim
that "smoking causes heart disease" is written in stone, just because it's
vital to their anti-smoking efforts and they've repeated it over and over
again and expended enormous resources to brainwash the public. Nor are they
entitled to cling to one-sided explanations, such as the one recently
expounded that "it's possible that smoking contributes to the risk of multiple
attacks by chlamydia" ("Bacterial infection produces blockage that can hurt
heart." The Washington Times 1996 Sun Dec 22, p D8), when it's clear that
smoking didn't "contribute to the risk" of H pylori infection many years
before taking up smoking.
In fact, the highest rates of C pneumoniae infection are among primary
school-age children too young to be smokers. Also, CP reportedly "caused
plaque...to develop in the blood vessels of rabbits that had no other risk
factors for the plaque." This is in contrast to the work by Stanton Glantz
and his ilk, purporting to link cigarette smoke to atherosclerosis, where
experimental animals were fed high-cholesterol diets.
They must instead determine how much of their so-called "smoking risk" is
actually attributable to these new risk factors, as with their old discredited
claim that smoking causes ulcers and stomach cancer.
This lawsuit's insinuations that the tobacco companies supposedly
concealed evidence that nicotine causes heart disease are foolish in view of
the fact that this idea is now discredited by the medical establishment
itself. (82, 86)
Smoking was falsely blamed for ulcers and stomach cancer actually caused
by Helicobacter pylori infection. Smoking supposedly caused from two to five
times greater risk of these diseases, and the anti-smokers concocted theories
and produced "evidence" that smoking increased stomach acid to cause ulcers,
and invoked carcinogens in cigarette smoke for stomach cancer. But ulcers and
stomach cancer were recently ever-so-quietly removed from the Centres for
Disease Control's list of so-called "smoking attributable" diseases. They
didn't care to publicly discuss the reasons.
Previous heart disease studies can be presumed confounded by their
failure to consider Helicobacter pylori and Chlamydia pneumoniae, so the
anti-smokers' might as well bulldoze their much boasted-about "mountain of
evidence" implicating smoking into the nearest landfill. They are no longer
entitled to beat us over the head with it.
They can retire their stock lines that "smoking is the leading prevent-
able cause of death," and that "smoking is the leading cause of premature
death," also, because the number of deaths which ought now be attributed to
infection, among both smokers and non-smokers, exceeds the remainder of those
blamed on smoking. They should not be permitted to continue to undercount
infection-related deaths by including only those due to acute illness such as
pneumonia, salmonella, etc. And they should stop lying to us by
inappropriately comparing the number of deaths of young people from causes
such as accidents and drugs, with the age-related deaths of old ones. (10)
And, the "proven contribution of smoking to cervical malignancies" they
speak of so confidently has now been proven to be an artifact of their own
methodological carelessness. Researchers found that "when HPV [human
papillomavirus] positive women were examined, thus removing those with
potential undetected HPV, the odds ratios of cervical cancer ... were
consistently and statistically not different from 1" for cigarette smoking.
This false association was due to residual confounding with a known high-
risk pathogen.
To implicate smoking, the anti-smokers trotted out their ever-handy
speculations of causation by carcinogens in cigarette smoke, without
perceiving any similar need to explain why the odds ratios for low education
typically exceeded those for smoking. Then they compounded their offense by
blaming passive smoking for cervical cancer in non-smokers as well. Again,
they exploited the socioeconomic similarity between smokers and passive
smokers.
Because bacteria and viruses are now known to cause cancers which have
been blamed on smoking, this ignorant and ill-researched lawsuit's accusation
that "The tobacco industry financed, supported and encouraged the manufacture
of fraudulent science" by "suggesting that there are alternative explanations
to the data," is complete nonsense. (70)
It says, "One `theory' [with sneering little quotation marks around the
word] detailed how genetic makeups predisposed individuals to illnesses." (70)
The anti-smokers themselves attempted to invoke individual genetic makeup to
explain away smoking-associated protection from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's
disease, so they are hardly in a position to deny this argument to the tobacco
industry.
This lawsuit recites that "More than forty (40) known carcinogens are
found in cigarette tobacco," (109) as if that is presumptive grounds to pull
them off the market. In fact, it is "well known to experts but not to the
general public, that ordinary food contains an abundance of carcinogenic
initiators which, in totality, appear to dwarf all synthetic sources. Based
upon the wide distribution of naturally-occurring carcinogens and their
presence at comparatively high levels in various foods, there is no good
reason to assume that traditional food is benign." (Robert J. Scheuplein,
Ph.D. Director, Office of Toxicological Sciences, US FDA. AAAS meeting, New
Orleans, LA, Feb. 1990.)
Ordinary food is known to be the primary source of benzo(a)pyrene
exposure. In fact, if the carcinogens in food were extracted and painted on
mice as has been done with cigarette smoke, the results would be similar.
This also has been known for decades, except by the public.
This lawsuit makes the groundless assertion that "Defendants artificially
add chemicals and flavourings to their products that increase toxicity and/or
carcinogenicity." (109) No additive or its effect is specified. Flavourings
added to tobacco are primarily GRAS ("Generally Recognized As Safe)
ingredients which may be freely added to food: sugar, glycerine, cocoa,
saccharine, and the like.
The US government has had the list of these additives for years, and
chose not to investigate their safety. Former HHS Secretary Louis Sullivan
told Congress in 1990 that he considered regulation of additives "unnecessary"
and "peripheral," in his own words. Besides, official findings that concern
is unwarranted would spoil this favourite anti-smoker fearmongering tactic.
The large prospective studies of Doll and Hill (1954, 1956) and of
Hammond and Horn (1958a, 1958b) are of far more epidemiologic importance than
animal studies. The medical establishment of the 1950s did not universally
consider even this evidence to be conclusive.
This lawsuit deceitfully lumps the advertising of the "1930s through the
1950s" together, in order to illegitimately judge the advertising of the 1930s
according to the knowledge of the 1950s, as "knowingly and/or recklessly
false, misleading, deceptive and/or fraudulent." (49) This description more
appropriately describes this same charge.
The anti-smokers want the tobacco industry to be judged guilty for
failing to judge itself guilty, cut its own throat and go out of business (and
their willing consumers be damned).
This lawsuit charges: "Despite the particularly harmful health
consequences of smoking for women, Defendants target advertising to this
segment of the population. For women, smoking reduces fertility, increases
the rate of miscarriages and stillbirths, retards uterine fetal growth and
results in lower birth weights in infants. Yet defendants have targeted and
continue to target young women with advertising campaigns designed for their
psychological appeal to this group of potential smokers." (6)
Infection of the amniotic membranes is the leading cause of the perinatal
conditions the anti-smokers blame on smoking, such as preterm birth, premature
rupture of the membranes, stillbirth, and neonatal pneumonia. However,
without placental pathological examinations, 90 percent of these cases are
missed. The studies implicating smoking invariably failed to do such
examinations.
Because these infections are more prevalent among the lower classes, the
anti-smokers once again merely exploited socioeconomic similarities and
differences between smokers, passive smokers, and non-smokers. Rates of
preterm birth actually increased while smoking rates declined.
The harmful role of chorioamnionitis has been known since the late
1950s. This is the same time the anti-smokers began to implicate maternal
smoking as harmful. They nurtured the anti-smoking angle, and neglected
science. Their zeal to lynch tobacco, and concomitant complacency about
disease, is responsible for retarding progress toward solving the problem.
Conscientious epidemiologists have long warned that even odds ratios of
two to five could be the result of confounding, and not real risks. The media
and their anti-smoking demagogues have ignored this warning, and rushed to
fling every purported "new smoking risk" in our faces, heedless of the clear
likelihood of socioeconomic confounding in SIDS, diabetes, infertility and
other disease. Demonstrated confounding of their supposedly unchallengeable
evidence proves that smoking deserves a presumption of innocence, and it is
epidemiologic malpractice to assume tobacco is guilty as they are accustomed
to doing.
The anti-smokers have also resorted to selectively publicizing studies
purporting to show a smoking risk, where the weight of the evidence shows
that no such risk exists, for numerous conditions, including various birth
defects, breast cancer, multiple myeloma, and radon-induced lung cancer. They
also selectively report subgroup analyses, which is disreputable epidemiology.
This tactic was used in accounts of every ETS study, which typically found
contradictory risks in different subgroups.
Studies funded by the Centres for Disease Control itself have shown the
very poor correlation between COPD (emphysema) death rates and the percentage
of smokers in a region. This should not be the case, if the risks associated
with smoking were as high as they claim. Nevertheless, their computer program
attributes the percentage of COPD deaths, and costs, according to the
percentage of smokers.
The anti-smokers' claim that nicotine is addicting is simply a ploy for
outlawing tobacco. They changed the definition solely to make nicotine fit,
and spread lies that the tobacco industry "concealed data" to distract
attention from their own actions.
The 1964 Surgeon General report only deemed nicotine "habituating," and
deliberately distinguished it, along with caffeine, from truly addicting
drugs. The anti-smokers removed the key requirements in the 1964 definition
for euphoriant effects and objective (not just subjective and anecdotal)
withdrawal symptoms, which made the definition so broad that even coffee
could be proclaimed "as addicting as heroin and cocaine."
It is precisely because nicotine does not cause physical dependence
that this criterion was removed from the definition, contrary to this
lawsuit's reference to "physical dependency on nicotine." (4)
The anti-smokers pretend that their "addiction science" justifies
persecuting nicotine while ignoring caffeine, when real science does not
justify such arbitrary distinctions between substances which are supposedly
the same by definition.
With media collusion, they have concealed the historical facts from the
public. And, they have spread a smokescreen of lies that the tobacco industry
"hid information about nicotine's addictive nature," when this supposedly
"hidden information" has actually been known for decades, and/or it would
still be insufficient to qualify nicotine as "addicting" under the uncorrupted
definition, and is superfluous under the corrupted one.
The anti-smokers attempt to deceive the public with junk science: (Quote)
A research report from 1963 commissioned by Brown & Williamson states that
when a chronic smoker is denied nicotine: "A body left in this unbalanced
state craves for renewed drug intake in order to restore the physiological
equilibrium. This unconscious desire explains the addiction of the individual
to nicotine." No information from that research has ever been voluntarily
disclosed to the public; in particular it was not shared with the Committee
that was preparing the first Surgeon General report and hence was not
reflected in that report. (Unquote) (126)
A real scientist would instantly ask, disequilibrium OF WHAT? This may
be convincing to the kind of people who go for colon cleansers, magic diets,
quack cancer cures and the like, but as stated, it is not fit to present to a
Surgeon General committee.
They deceive the public by misrepresenting the babblings of corporate
executives and lawyers, and other loose and informal usages, as the scientific
opinion of the tobacco industry, to supposedly "prove" that they "knew" that
nicotine is "addicting," as the Attorney General has done:
"High-ranking officers in the tobacco industry have privately
acknowledged, since at least the early 1960s, that nicotine is an addictive
drug. For example, Addison Yeaman, general counsel at Brown & Williamson,
wrote in an internal memorandum in 1963: `Moreover, nicotine is addictive. We
are, then, in the business of selling nicotine, an addictive drug effective in
the release of stress mechanisms.' And in 1962, the scientific advisor to the
board of directors of British American Tobacco Company ("BATCO"), Brown &
Williamson's parent company, stated that `smoking is a habit of addiction
...." (46)
Both of these quotes predate the 1964 SG definition, one of whose
purposes was to establish a standardized definition of the term, and therefore
cannot be construed to mean what the anti-smokers want it to mean. But the
Attorney General, self-righteously ignorant and contemptuous of history,
freely twists their words to mean what he wants them to mean, and declaims
that "The tobacco executives' false Congressional testimony about nicotine is
but the most recent sordid episode in the industry's campaign, spanning five
decades, to sow confusion and misinformation about the health effects of
smoking."
This lawsuit is so completely promiscuous and lacking in scientific
merit as to throw in an anonymous speculation from "an RJR-MacDonald Marketing
Summary Report from 1983" that "probably the physiological satisfaction
provided by the nicotine level of the product" is the primary reason people
smoke, as supposed evidence regarding a scientific issue. (133)
The Attorney General's announcement that "The term `addictive' used in
this Complaint is synonymous and interchangeable with the term "dependence-
producing'; both terms refer to the persistent and repetitive intake of
psychoactive substances despite evidence of harm and a desire to quit," (41)
is itself a priceless contribution to the cause of "sow[ing] confusion and
misinformation," since he thinks himself entitled to arbitrarily redefine
others' words 33 years ex post facto, and shuns any attempt to determine what
the speaker meant, its context or the relevant qualifications of those quoted.
Unlike the 1964 SG definition, the 1988 SG definition was simply rammed
down the public's throat, with no discussion allowed, because the anti-smoking
conspirators and their media accomplices wanted to outlaw tobacco under the
pretext that nicotine is addictive. The public has been denied the
opportunity to hear the opinions of actual tobacco industry research
scientists, such as John Robinson and Walter Pritchard of RJ Reynolds,
regarding "nicotine addiction." Free and open discussion is too dangerous to
the anti-smoking movement. Instead, we are subjected to media-filtered
accounts of Rep. Henry Waxman's infamous inquisitions of tobacco industry
executives.
The Attorney General's insinuations that the tobacco executives lied
to Congress amount to no more than a tantrum that anyone should dare to
dispute anti-smoker dogma. (192f) Also, we question his authority to appoint
himself judge, jury, prosecution, and defense, and "convict" them of this
charge when the US Congress did not see fit to do so.
The anti-smokers' allegations about "manipulating the nicotine content of
cigarettes" are twisted and paranoid fabrications. We are asked to believe
that the tobacco industry has developed all sorts of sophisticated techniques
for nicotine delivery, the end result of which are that cigarettes tend to be
slightly weaker than in the old days, and unequivocally contain less tobacco.
A sane person would deduce that the cigarette companies devised ways to
use less tobacco to save costs, and that consumer tastes changed toward
milder cigarettes.
The accusation that they manipulate the nicotine delivery of tobacco
products is also ludicrous to a rational person. It presumes that smokers are
automatons, programmed to take a specified number of puffs of a specified depth
in a specified length of time, exactly like a smoking machine, and are unable
to modify their own behaviour.
The tobacco industry supposedly determined the exact level of nicotine
necessary to "addict" smokers, which level has never been specified by either
the tobacco industry or the anti-smokers themselves. For those who reject the
corrupt definition it logically does not exist. The anti-smokers deem it
unnecessary to state what level they are accusing people who don't believe in
it of deliberately exceeding.
Then, they supposedly devised sneaky ways to increase the amount of
nicotine delivered, so as to "addict" smokers without their awareness, while
the anti-smokers' phony "addiction science" claims in contradiction that
smokers are able to precisely control the amount of nicotine they receive.
It is a complete inversion of the truth to allege that the tobacco
industry "could have designed and manufactured a safer cigarette, but refused
to do so." (109) They fail to note that it is not within the power of
directors of research to force consumers to buy a product they do not want.
Philip Morris' denicotinized cigarette "Next" and RJ Reynolds' "Premier"
failed because consumers didn't like them, not because of fears that they
might "make it easier for dedicated smokers to quit." (110)
They also conceal the fact that the anti-smokers themselves hysterically
oppose low tar and nicotine cigarettes, including products like Premier, on
the grounds that reducing health risks would impede their efforts to make
smokers quit. The Coalition on Smoking OR Health filed petitions with the FDA
to ban them. So much for the anti-smokers' professed health concerns.
It is transparently false that "Cigarette manufacturers have designed
"light" cigarettes in a deliberate attempt to circumvent FTC methods of
measuring tar and nicotine levels. By drilling nearly invisible holes in the
filter paper, the cigarette manufacturers have prevented FTC smoking machines
from accurately measuring the actual tar and nicotine delivery to smokers, who
naturally block the tiny, laser-generated perforations with their fingers or
lips, and thereby receive greater tar and nicotine yields than indicated by
FTC measurements." (140a)
Nobody accidentally smokes with their fingers tightly curled around the
filter holes. It would be extremely awkward. If someone wants a stronger
smoke, they tear the filter off, or buy non-light cigarettes. (Perhaps the
AG forgot to accuse them of making filters tearable to deceive the FTC.)
Otherwise, they "obtain close to the same amount of nicotine from each
cigarette despite differences in yield as measured by the FTC smoking machine"
(140a) by inhaling more deeply and more often, not by blocking the holes.
Thus smokers, not the tobacco companies, "manipulate nicotine delivery levels
in supposedly reduced tar and reduced nicotine cigarettes through various
strategies." (140)
The number of smokers who even care about the FTC numbers is
infinitesimally small in the first place. They are a mockery of consumer
information because they were instituted on the demand of the anti-smokers,
for their own propaganda purposes, and not that of the actual consumers.
The anti-smokers lied about secondhand smoke causing lung cancer in non-
smokers as well. Indoor Air Quality director Robert Axelrad admitted to the
EPA Inspector General that the crucial chapters of the report on ETS were
written via illegal pass-through contracts to his own hand-picked cony,
Kenneth G Brown. It was he who fudged the confidence intervals, and used
spousal smoking studies to justify workplace smoking bans and hysteria about
parental smoking, although studies on workplace and childhood exposure showed
no risk.
The number of "non-smoker deaths" is also inflated by counting ex-
smokers, and by extrapolating down to a hypothetical "zero ETS level" that
falsely assumed a baseline of zero cotinine in non-ETS-exposed non-smokers.
It did not take into account that common foods such as potatoes and tomatoes
naturally contain nicotine, and are eaten in amounts that would result in
cotinine levels equivalent to daylong exposure to secondhand smoke.
The EPA's own scientists were against declaring ETS a human carcinogen,
but the media lied to us that there was "no scientific dissent." And,
when Rep. Tom Bliley (R-VA) exposed the corruption, the media hushed it up
so the public heard nothing.
Although studies have shown a link between past respiratory disease and
lung cancer, including in never-smokers, there has been little follow-up
investigation. The role of Chlamydia pneumoniae in particular ought to be
explored. It may be a powerful risk factor that has been overlooked, because
symptoms of infection are typically very mild, and may not be detected without
laboratory testing.
The anti-smokers pretend that smoking bans are necessary to protect
asthmatics, yet asthma deaths have tripled since the anti-smoking movement
began. They make public heros out of people who hyperventilate themselves and
then claim that a passing whiff of secondhand smoke caused them to have an
asthma attack, even when they know that the EMTs treated them for
hyperventilation, not asthma. Hyperventilation is something that people do to
themselves by breathing too much, not something that happens to them from
being unable to breathe.
Actual studies of these supposed acute ETS effects, as opposed to
anecdotes, are nonexistent. The subject is not addressed even in the EPA
report on ETS, although EPA-OHEA Director Terry Harvey urged that it should
be, evidently under the misperception that an actual body of evidence surely
must exist to justify the fuss.
In a civilized society, people are supposed to be presumed innocent until
proven guilty. For the anti-smokers, a mere accusation of harm is enough,
because it gives them an excellent weapon to take advantage of other peoples'
decency.
In contrast to their enthusiasm for seizing upon any excuse to rack up
a few more deaths to blame on smoking, the Centres for Disease Control has
been completely derelict in its duties regarding illness and death which could
be attributed to non-smoking. Non-smokers are at greater risk of Alzheimer's
disease, Parkinson's disease, ulcerative colitis, and several other
conditions. These could together account for 95,000 excess new cases per year
of these diseases (about 73,000 due to AD), and over 1.3 million excess
prevalence cases. Nor has the CDC bothered to estimate the excess costs due
to these illnesses (probably around $20 billion), although they are of crucial
importance in calculation of Medicaid and Social Security costs.
SUMMARY
The anti-smokers want the tobacco industry to be judged as if the public
believes that commercial advertising is the gold standard of medical
information; and to be held accountable by the strictest of all possible
standards, stricter than even the medical establishment, including the
presumption of omniscience.
But for itself, the anti-smoking health establishment demands complete
license to lie and deceive, while still simultaneously insisting on the
unquestioning trust and respect of the public.
Those who lie about matters of fact savagely attack cigarette advertising
for what amounts to no more than expressing feelings of which they disapprove.
Their brainwashing our children with anti-smoker lies is really an act of
cultural genocide by the government against our people.
Their pretence of "saving the children" is just another ruse to get their
foot in the door toward their true goal of outlawing tobacco for adults.
Massive disobedience of the laws against sales to minors demonstrates the
public's contempt for those laws. But the anti-smokers refuse to get the
message, and maliciously blame the tobacco industry instead. (5)
Despite the anti-smokers' abundant miseducation of the public, abuse and
humiliation of smokers, and legally-enforced smoking bans, they have still
made relatively little headway toward their "Tobacco-Free America." The
people would seem to be unwilling.
It is doubtful that the anti-smoking movement could even exist at all
without this massive resort to lies, fraud, deceit, and corruption. These
have been primarily paid for with our own tax dollars, no less.
The anti-smokers rant about the supposedly invincible strength of the
tobacco lobby and its seemingly magical powers to "deceive" people, presumably
by Svengali-like mind waves. But we know that Congress has done nothing to
punish the anti-smokers for their crimes. And the Justice Department wastes
our tax dollars by busting billboards for pictures of a camel, while
overlooking the anti-smokers' massive, systematic campaign of defamation
culminating in an organized, interstate conspiracy to concoct and disseminate
malicious Medicaid lawsuits.
Anti-smoking conspirators in government agencies, as well as the American
Cancer Society, American Heart Association, American Lung Association, and the
American Medical Association have grievously violated the rights of all
Americans. There must be a complete investigation of what they have been
doing to our country.
If the anti-smoking movement cannot survive without relying upon lawless,
corrupt and anti-social means, it should not be permitted to survive. Their
tax funding must be cut off, the movement outlawed and its ringleaders
prosecuted. The media's role as active accomplices in wrongdoing, not just
mere dupes, must not be overlooked. These are the real conspirators and
racketeers.
The contention that the tobacco industry has engaged in a conspiracy to
deceive the public is absurd to the point of lunacy. (198c) For 30 years,
there has been nothing but an endless barrage of anti-smoking hate propaganda,
generated by government-funded demagogues in collusion with the media. It is
the anti-smokers who ought to be forced to fund a massive remedial education
program. (VIIB)
The tobacco industry has scarcely been able to get a word in edgeways.
When they do, it has been filtered by the universally anti-smoking media.
The massive publicity they have given the fraudulent OTA and CDC smoking cost
claims and their consistent citation as fact, versus the virtually nonexistent
mention of the CRS report, is eloquent testimony to the one-sided nature of
the public's information.
The Attorney General claims that "Defendants spend billions of dollars
every year misleading the public and promoting the myth that smoking
cigarettes does not cause cardiovascular disease, lung cancer, emphysema and
other diseases and that smokers live healthy and vital lives." (148)
Where? In over 10 years of activism, the tobacco industry has never made
an effort to disseminate scientific material to me, fellow smokers' advocates,
or the general public.
I haven't seen any "`brilliantly conceived and executed' strategy to
`creat[e] doubt about the health charge without actually denying it.'" (8, 47)
They have apparently not bothered to research the economic literature, let
alone the health literature, to even defend themselves. The tobacco industry
didn't discover this exonerating evidence. The anti-smoking health
establishment did, despite themselves.
And, there is no reason the tobacco industry should not say that "smokers
live healthy and vital lives," because they do. It is the anti-smokers who
mislead people that smokers are sick all the time, and that average smokers
can expect to die in their 50s and 60s instead of their 70s. This lawsuit's
lurid rhetoric that "Defendants' conduct has generated a human tragedy
practically beyond comprehension" is sheer hallucination. (10)
The material I present has been gathered by me and other ordinary
citizens, from medical libraries and government officials. Nevertheless, the
media habitually smear and dismiss it as obtained from and funded by the
tobacco industry.
They have also systematically denied me the opportunities to present my
views that they provide to anti-smokers. I was prevented from questioning
our Wisconsin Attorney General about his smoking cost and other claims, on a
radio call-in program. They have deceived the public with sham debates by
selecting ill-informed smokers' advocates who are easier for their anti-
smoking favourites to defeat. And they have repeatedly subjected me and my
fellow smokers' advocates to personal abuse and rudeness, such as publicly
calling us "ignorant" and "flat-earthers," to discourage us from speaking out
in our own defense.
Yours truly,
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