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| Forces International | ETHICS OR CORRUPTION |
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The worthy poor are now being asked to cough up some of their own scarce cash to make up the deficits the legislature and the government caused when they diverted a chunk of the cigarette tax health care funds into the general fund to prop up the state's finances. There is one group of cigarette tax fund recipients, however, whose funding will not be touched. Norman Kjono explains how in these morally confused times the specially connected rich folk get to keep their "share" of the loot while those, in whose name the tax was supposedly passed, can go eat dirt.
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February 10 - Smoking Bans: The Ultimate Special-Interest Insider's Game - We are now a decade into the process of the same activists using the same junk science excuses and the same negative labels to promote the same ban policies that benefit the same special-interests who still pay considerable sums of money to the same activists. If that seems a bit circular it is, as is tobacco control policy. The foregoing merely illustrates the point that once people embrace the concept that negatively labeling, unfairly stereotyping, and stigmatizing one’s neighbors for bucks and influence is a legitimate way to make a living the only matters left open to question are how much they will make by doing so and how long they can get away with it. It also seems to me that after a decade of tobacco control consistently failing to produce results that it touts to achieve policy that it wants – notably including material and sustaining reductions in youth or adult smoking, as will be discussed -- we the people need to finally connect on what is being done to our public health policy and the integrity of our governing processes to benefit powerful and entrenched special-interests. Perhaps politicians and the public were deceived by tobacco control back in the early 1990s because their pattern of conduct was not yet clear. It is, after all one thing to embrace an apparently noble and plausible goal, but another matter entirely if one continues to support programs that do not deliver the results promised while clearly benefiting special-interests that pay those who promote them. Today the pattern of conduct by special-interest health activists is transparently clear, so there is no credible excuse for continuing to support their self-serving policies. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me" should be our watch words regarding tobacco control at this decade-long mile-post where we are experiencing a second aggressive push for another variation on the smoking ban theme.
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And all of this is visually pleasing. The cigarette creates a new aesthetic truth, an air of mystery and rebellion. Mystery and rebellion are very cool things. They are interesting, alluring and provocative. One is drawn toward these characteristics, and the cigarette is often a quick and easy indicator of all of them. Bryan Edenfield is a non-smoker but he chooses to be politically incorrect. His article's headline, "Light Up Kids: Smoking Is Cool," will hit its mark. Anti-smokers will be appalled. Their small minds cannot comprehend irony, or people who take any joy in life, or balance in perspective. Smart kids will just chuckle at Edenfield's message. They already recognize the hateful and hysterical tone of modern anti-smoking propaganda just as Edenfield does. SECONDHAND SMOKE KILLS! No, it doesn't, and that kind of mental bludgeoning inspires rebellion. A caravan of Joe Camels could not make smoking seem so cool. Kurt Vonnegut, satirist and smoker, is quoted here. Vonnegut considers cigarette smoking "a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide," so he keeps at it, in his eighty-second year. Vonnegut is old enough to remember when freedom of choice was respected, and when hateful movements were properly recognized, and put down. Vonnegut's personal habits are strictly his own province. His wisdom is what makes him a great writer, and that, is what we should admire. You don't have to smoke, kids, no matter how cool your nasty Anti makes that seem. You just have to keep laughing at her till we lock her back in the attic where she belongs.
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We're not that far away from this state of limited choices. Pierce County's smoking ban was an example. So was the Kitsap County Health District's recommendation for mandatory usage of bike helmets last year. Pam Dzama, a former smoker, is rightly worried that the smothering figure of a caring, smothering and ultimately bossy do-gooder is taking the place of the confident and self-reliant persona that built this country. She marvels that intellectuals in the groves of academe muse that too much choice may be a bad thing. Too many choices, they say, lead individuals to make the wrong choices, which lead them down the paths of unhappiness. To them "sound social policy" is an ideal that makes free choice obsolete while personal responsibility becomes irrelevant. It's a nightmare scenario we must all work to avoid.
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That statement is demonstrably false. Anyone who knows anything about the research on smoking and health ― and presumably that would include the authors of the study and editorial ― knows that the risk of smoking-related disease increases with the number of cigarettes smoked. Steve Milloy of Junkscience uncovers one more example of how anti-tobacco special interests pursue an agenda that is demonstrably harmful to smokers. For hundreds of years heavy smokers have been advised to cut back on their consumption or risk ill health. Before the tobacco control industry usurped the role of actual health care providers everyone knew that chain smoking is not a recipe for good health. Overindulgence, whether of alcohol, salt, sugar and even nutritional food can lead to health problems whereas moderate consumption of most things, even on a frequent basis, poses no risk for most people. Smoking was once regarded as merely one of a myriad of factors that influence health. Even the anti-smokers, when pressed directly, will admit that a pack-a-day smoker who keeps himself fit is no more likely to succumb to the falsely labeled "smoking-related conditions" than are non-smokers. The best advice for a three-pack-a-day smoker is to cut down to one pack. That was the conventional wisdom for years before cessation, aided by expensive pharmaceutical products, became the prescription dispensed by ignorant, or brow-beatened doctors and duplicitous "health educators." Instead of the common sense approach that work for years we have anti-tobacco activists cranking out a study that astonishingly proclaims cutting back on smoking doesn't reduce health risks from tobacco smoking one iota. If the tobacco industry dared to bamboozle the public with such blatant self-serving nonsense it would find itself in court. As anti-tobacco continues to prove that it will lie to advance its own agenda it's long overdue to hold it to the same standards that apply to the evil tobacco industry. |
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[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. |
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King County is not alone in taking its marching orders from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Last month Pierce County decided that big bucks were more important than upholding state law. King County, along with many other Washington localities, is joining the assault upon law-abiding citizens and hardworking, taxpaying business people. |
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Grant money, such as that from pharmaceutical Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is flowing into the state from special-interests to support promoting the smoking bans, and prospectively to pay for costs of counties defending the bans as well. Whether citizens of the state like it or not, it is clear that pharmaceutical special-interests will mandate our local affairs though a New Jersey private foundation. And it seems that there is an adequate supply of compliant politicians in Washington sufficient to enact that agenda, regardless of the expressed will of the people in that state, lead in large part by the state’s Attorney General and candidate for Governor Christine O. Gregoire. Norman Kjono has kept his sharp eye on anti-tobacco's New Year thrust to user prohibition into Washington State. Late last year a health board in one county banned smoking everywhere despite an unambiguous state law that forbids such a smoking ban. When restaurants, bars and bowling alleys cried foul and took their grievances to court, the health board called an out-of-state anti-smoking pressure group and asked for money to defend the ban in court. At one time it was necessary to "connect the dots" to get a clear picture of how special interests are buying public policy. In Washington State today the dots are connected by the special interests themselves. It's obvious and it's ugly. |
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January 7 - Quod Erat Demonstrandum - Even though we've entered the New Year, let's take a stroll down memory lane to one year ago. We find ourselves in North Dakota where the legislature just voted against a bill that would have prohibited both the sale and the use of tobacco. The representative who crafted the bill enumerated the death toll (1,000 per year) and the costs ($351-million in medical expenses and lost productivity) borne by the state. Provided by the tobacco control industry, these stark numbers shrieked for something to be done. Surely, one would think, the big-hearted, good-health advocates who daily damn the tobacco industry and shake their fingers at smokers could be counted on to clamor for a bill that would halt the tobacco bloodbath. "[C]ommittee members were frustrated last week with the testimony from anti-tobacco groups that testified against the tobacco ban, including the North Dakota Medical Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, North Dakota Public Health Association and North Dakota Nurses Association." That was then. One year later, after having worked their damnedest to keep North Dakotans smoking, the health organizations issued their "report card" to the state grading North Dakota on its tobacco control efforts. The state got a "D" based on the paucity of public spending for smoking prevention campaigns, a refusal to enact smoking bans and a reluctance to raise the cigarette tax. "How many more preventable deaths must occur and how many more children must become addicted to cigarettes before we say enough?" American Lung Association chief executive John L. Kirkwood said. Instead of whining to the forgetful press, Mr. Kirkwood need only look into the mirror to have his question answered. He is responsible for the continuing death toll in North Dakota. His organization not only refused to work with the legislature to ban tobacco from the state but actively and aggressively did all it could to prevent the ban from being enacted. The blood of 1,000 North Dakotans drips from his hands. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been drained from a cash-strapped state due to Mr. Kirkwood and his American Lung Association. It's a marvel that he isn't in jail and an outrage that he is damning the same state legislature he lobbied one year ago to kill the bill that would have prevented those needless deaths.
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January
6
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The
Costly Illusion of Regulating Unknowable Risks
(PDF) - Fewer papers have better and more clearly illustrated the enormous fraud of contemporary risk assessment.
It's an industry which has a
huge and quantifiable cost to society while producing data that is
unreliable at best, and totally false at worst. Totally accessible to the
layperson, this paper shows how armies of professional scaremongers have
convinced politicians that the risk assessment junk science is well over
their heads, and that policy-making is thus best delegated to those
same scare-mongers. To complicate matters, junk science provides the tools for political advancement and
budget-balancing: scientific fraud legitimised via legislation provides
great pretexts for the taxation of
industries, products and private citizens, while giving the real
power to bureaucrats who act in the name of “health,
safety and environment” and risk no political consequences for their
actions. There is no mention of smoking in this paper, but it is more than
clear that the pattern applies to it too – and to hundreds of other substances,
behaviours and industries. It was difficult to select two "teasers"
from this excellent paper, but we did, and here they are: "...As for the cost, U.S. outlays for health, safety, and environmental regulation – substantially driven by risk assessments of conjectural cancer risks – were estimated at over $700 billion in 1999, an amount that exceeded the after-tax profits of the combined U.S. industrial activity.” “Some 20 years ago,, the International Agency for Research on Cancer of the World Health Organization admitted that ‘at the present time a correlation between carcinogenicity in animals and possible human risk cannot be made on a scientific basis.” The scientific situation has not changed today, but the political one no doubt has. And we certainly do not like what “public health” has changed into, and the world it is preparing for us in the near future.
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If what the anti-tobacco enterprise proclaims about tobacco were true tobacco would certainly qualify as a Weapon of Mass Destruction that is continuously and repetitively employed. 420,000 dead per year is nearly 15 times those who perished in the tragedy of September 11, two years ago (the equivalent of 945,000 dead from tobacco over that period). In today’s 2004 political environment, the only rational and honest public policy that could rise from anti-tobacco’s claims about tobacco being true and 420,000 therefore dead each year from those products would be to immediately prohibit the manufacture and distribution of tobacco products and to round up and deport tobacco company executives to Guantanamo as known terrorist enemy combatants. Clearly such a prohibition was and is within the current powers of state and federal government, but to do so would also cut off the $206 billion-plus MSA gravy train and eliminate the now-stable source consumer base for pharmaceutical nicotine replacement products. The twisted nature of today’s special-interest political cabal is simply amazing: one can be fined, fired, lose a professional license in some states, or lose custody of children, etc. over consuming a legal tobacco product, however those who anti-tobacco claims are directly responsible for nearly a million dead on US soil are rewarded with a state-revenue-sharing tobacco settlement that not only keeps them in business but also increases and protects their profits derived through distributing allegedly lethal products. Norman Kjono is not the first to marvel at the hypocrisy of those who moan and groan about the death toll supposedly wrought by tobacco yet who refuse to make illegal the manufacture of such deadly devices. Rarely, however, has the dichotomy of anti-tobacco's words versus their actions been so strongly addressed. As we noted last year when the American Lung Association rushed to the podium to denounce a state bill that would have made tobacco sales illegal, anti-tobacco's hands are drenched with blood with more blood on the way as long as long as they support a status quo that slaughters millions. |
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The chill in the air is caused by the scary prospect of a corrupt health "charity" entwining itself into the nation's workplace regulatory agency. Placing this advocate of behavior modification and social engineering into a position of power bodes ill for America's work force. As Wanda Hamilton notes: With good reason, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration has NOT deemed ETS an occupational safety issue and, therefore, has NOT called for restrictions on smoking in the workplace. Actually, there was no way they could do that without also banning so many other substances that shared properties with ETS that they would have shut down industry altogether. But now the American Heart Association, which is NOT part of the government and which is not answerable to the people or the legislators, has become a "partner" with OSHA to "manage" heart health in the workplace. Having such a corrupt and dishonest and money-hungry private organization be part of any government program is not good news for workers or their employers.
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Steve Milloy, junkscience.com, is far too kind regarding the American Heart Association's promotion of this bit of scientific dreck. AHA has too many highly paid con men on the payroll to undertake an action without thought. AHA knew exactly what it was doing. Milloy marshals the preposterous claims of this study into a row then smacks them down like a row of dominos. Of especial interest for those who have dealt with the doublespeak of anti-tobacco pressure groups such as the American Heart Association will especially enjoy the final paragraphs of this junk science autopsy. Pulling information out of so-called health education outfits is like extracting impacted wisdom teeth. It takes a strong stomach and great determination. Milloy's revelations are worth all the effort.
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Stanton Glantz is the quintessential Lying Anti. A long line of Glantz debunkers had already formed before Jacob Sullum joined it. Here's some commentary that began after Glantz tried to explain his exquisitely ridiculous Helena, Montana secondhand smoke "study" last April. Links are provided both to Sullum's calmly devastating criticism of the Helena malarkey, and to Glantz's typically vituperative response, to Sullum. Reader comments follow. The readers' opinion board has been neglected of late, but it's still open, and it's always fun to poke some more holes in a blowhard. Stanton Glantz is filled with an inexhaustible supply of hot air. Check this out for a good laugh, and add your own barbs, if you like. On a positive note, the general public is also catching on to the absurdity of the Helena Study. Letters to the editor from two Seattle residents shows that Lincoln was right. You cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Prohibitionists Use 2nd hand data & Junk Science Promoted (scroll down)
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October 21 - Secondhand Junk - I could only laugh last April when I first heard about a study claiming that a smoking ban in Helena, Mont., cut the city’s heart attack rate by 58 percent in six months. First, the study isn’t easy to evaluate -- but not because it’s rocket science. There simply is no study to evaluate. The results were issued in typical junk science style via a quick-and-dirty slideshow presentation at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology. Six months later, the study still is not available to the public. Laughable though this ersatz study is, the august pages of the New York Times found the space to print a paean to its revelations, sung by an anti-tobacco acolyte. With all the denigration the Times has faced over its credibility of late it's amazing the paper would risk sullying its image even further by printing a piece of garbage that praises an anti-tobacco "study" that stinks to high heaven. Basically the Helena study was the creation of a pair of anti-smoking doctors who, after the city banned smoking everywhere, counted the number of incidents where people sought medical assistance because of heart problems. They then compared the number with incidents occurring before the ban. Although the numbers were extremely small, by necessity since Helena is a tiny city, and the time expanse to record heart problems was limited to six months, the period in which the ban was in effect, the doctors found that there were fewer heart attacks during the smoking ban. Now that the ban has been rudely consigned to the trash bin, heart attacks have resumed their pre-ban level. And pigs really can fly. Lurking around the fringes of the "Helena Study" is statistical manipulator extraordinaire Stanton Glantz, mechanical engineer and resident anti-tobacco guru at the University of California at San Francisco. Like a fly feeding on doggie poo, Glantz darts, weaves and buzzes, taking what he needs to advance his agenda, then moving off to fresher dung. On the other hand, I’m not surprised to see Stan Glantz’s involvement in the Mirage of Helena. Glantz’s colleague on the Helena study tried to pass him off to me as “professor of statistics.” But I know better. I’ve observed Glantz for some time. I’ve debated him on the radio. He’s a shameless say-anything, do-anything anti-smoking zealot. Steve Milloy has Glantz' number. It's astonishing that the New York Times, consumed by its anti-tobacco fanaticism would, even by implication, support the manure dump that is the Stanton Glantz trademark.
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We hope they sort things out. In fact something like this corrupt and convoluted taxpayer financing of health hysteria is going on all over the world. In the Nazi era Hitler used the confiscated wealth of the Jews to finance his mad persecution of the Jews. Today, in a host of countries, it is primarily cigarette tax revenue that is used to persecute smokers. In the US, "hidden tax" revenues from Tobacco Master Settlement payments, also financed by cigarette smokers, are often spent by states to the same mad end. So, if the New Zealand situation comes as a surprise to the country's MPs, it's no surprise to FORCES. New Zealand anti-smoking groups have been happily spending public funds, lobbying government and the media with a hate campaign, for years. In this they are not different from their counterpart organizations across the globe. It's business as usual to them. According to this article, under contract with the New Zealand government, in return for payment amounting to millions of New Zealand dollars, "ASH is required to appear in the media at least 50 times a year and liaise with MPs. The Smokefree Coalition is paid to lobby to 'create a climate of support'." Reached for comment, regarding the practice of lobbying Members of Parliament for specific legislation, Trish Fraser of ASH casually confirms, "We do use Ministry of Health money for that." People wonder how anti-smoking could possibly have reached such monstrous proportion worldwide. We point again to the Nazi precedent. Joseph Goebbels believed if a lie is told often enough, from a position of authority, it becomes the truth, to the masses. Prohibitionist zealots have always been among us. This is simply their heyday. So entrenched has their cultist psychology become in decadent international culture, they are a formidable foe, to sane public policy. Still individual citizens and interested groups fight them everywhere. A New Zealand bar and restaurant smoking ban seemed a done deal even though the parties affected, business owners and their patrons, do not want it. Bruce Robertson, chief executive of the New Zealand Hospitality Association, points to the new investigation of corruption in New Zealand's anti-smoking movement, and pleads for a reconsideration of sanity. The smoking ban bill, he says, "should now be referred back to the select committee for reconsideration with an open mind, rather than the prevailing attitude whereby the government obviously has a fixed view on the subject and either will not or cannot listen to reasoned argument." We pray some day they will or can. Keep trying, Mr. Robertson.
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Five years have passed. Anti-smoking moves in calculated steps and it is never satisfied. Cigarette taxes have continued rising exponentially all over the world. Absolutist bar and restaurant smoking bans are appearing in Great Britain just as they are in numerous other countries. A comprehensive European ban is being pushed by the European Union and the World Health Organization. No organization has been more instrumental in, or delighted with these developments, than Action on Smoking and Health. Their line today is that they are not seeking total tobacco prohibition, don't be silly, they don't want to send tobacco smokers to jail. They are, folks. They do.
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How can this be? The EPA, which made eliminating secondhand smoke a national crusade, blithely gives the fumes emitted by fossil fuels a pass. Norman Kjono explains: The EPA refuses to classify emissions from burning hydrocarbons in automobiles and busses as air pollutants. Of course, the fact that hydrocarbons come from burning oil rather than tobacco wouldn't have anything whatsoever to do with that EPA conclusion . . . Considering that the Bush administration cabinet and its senior officials could serve simultaneously as the board of directors of oil and utility corporations, there may be a strong message indeed in the EPA's present conclusion about air pollution. The message appears to be that in today's political culture legitimate science bends to the will of vested economic interests. But we've know that for years now, at least since the December 1992 EPA report on secondhand smoke. So the current EPA ruling is more of a confirmation of the obvious than a new or honest scientific work product. Well, that's interesting. I suspect that secondhand smoke can no longer be classified as an air pollutant, either! Notably the EPA refuses to classify carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and also refuses to classify many other emissions from burning hydrocarbons as pollutants, too. Many of the constituents of secondhand smoke are also emissions from hydrocarbons and automobile exhaust. Hydrocarbon exhaust from cars and buses also contains many toxic substances that secondhand smoke does not. |
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A 20/20 "Give Me A Break" segment on obesity lawsuits gave Banzhaf plenty of time to make his case -- but even veteran newswoman Barbara Walters concluded, "That sounds crazy...whatever happened to self-control?" Q: What is wrong with self-control? A: Lawyers just can't get filthy rich and change the behavior of US citizens, that's what is wrong with self control. Personal responsibility and free choice just does not enter into their equation. Greed is a good thing as long as Banzhaf is reaping the profits.
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The series, from filmmaker Gregory Nava and with an ensemble cast including Edward James Olmos, Raquel Welch, Sonia Braga and Esai Morales, is about an extended east Los Angeles family. Johnson & Johnson, which had been the sole corporate underwriter for the first season in 2002, will be joined as a sponsor by the American Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit anti-smoking group. Care to predict how many episodes will dispense anti-smoker slander and anti-tobacco disinformation? Johnson & Johnson (along with its marketing, "non-profit" front group) makes money pushing smoking cessation devices while the American Legacy Foundation's only reason for existence is to "persuade" smokers to quit. And by the way, since the ALF's mission was set forth by the tobacco settlement and that mission does not include sponsoring television shows, the payment given to it should be reduced by the exact amount it has given to PBS to produce a network drama.
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Until now. It is with satisfaction that we note Dan Morales, former attorney general of Texas, is confined in jail while awaiting trial in a federal court. Not long ago Morales was crowing about his part in the so-called tobacco settlement. The tobacco settlement, affecting all 50 states, is the largest transfer of wealth from working Americans to those who produce nothing. In total, $260-billion dollars will be stolen from taxpaying, law-abiding citizens. Billions have been and will be paid to private attorneys who, through government connections, shaped and guided the tobacco settlement. Morales had hoped to use his part in the settlement as a spring board to higher office but the voters of Texas, to their credit, know a con man when they see one and he lost his bid to be the Democratic candidate for state governor. After that defeat it has been one long slide downhill for Morales, culminating in jail time. Although the specific charges that brought him to stony lonesome are not specifically related to the Texas tobacco settlement, he would not be facing those charges had he not been the prime mover and instigator. Had there not been a tobacco settlement or had Morales not played such a prominent role he would still be a two-bit pol with a political future. Now he's a jail bird and his face through the bars sure does look worried. |
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June 12 - Liberals promote 'reefer madness' in Canada - Observant people have noticed a strange inconsistency of those who advocate the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana while simultaneously endorsing every public policy that results in the de facto prohibition of tobacco. The same politicians, columnists and do-gooders who wax eloquent about the wonders of marijuana and who deplore the insanity of the "war on drugs" are very happy to eject smokers from restaurants, take children away from tobacco-smoking parents and price cigarettes out of the reach of those of modest means.None have examined this phenomenon more thoroughly than Warren Klass, president of FORCES-Canada. We reprint an opinion piece that appeared in the Providence Journal.
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June 9 - Pictures Worth Thousands Of Words - IF TRUTH IS ON THEIR SIDE, WHY DO THEY LIE? One pro-truth, pro-choice activist has taken the time to prepare graphs and pie charts illustrating how overblown, if not downright deceptive, are the claims of anti-tobacco. Stings of numbers are numbing, a fact anti-tobacco exploits, whereas a simple picture using the data anti-tobacco produces shows that smoking hysteria is just that. Take a look at the pie chart representation of the 430,000 plus Americans killed by smoking. With nearly half representing the very old, of what use is this figure to anti-tobacco except to muddy the waters? Low birth weight? Obviously not caused by smoking mothers. Attention disorder syndrome? Ditto. In an act of real public beneficence and generosity, the activists offers these pictures to the public. Present them to policy makers and members of the media. Those who view them and still hew to the anti-smoking line are either willfully dishonest or are so mentally disturbed as to make them public dangers.
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June 9 - Manufacturing Public Support - These are heady days for Joe Cherner, the erstwhile stockbroker who made a fortune then devoted his brilliant talents to ending smoking in New York City, New York state, then the world. Although he now lives in France where he needn't be exposed to the consequences of his smoke-free wet dreams, he is all over the country preaching his creed and twisting legislator's arms. He surfaced in Delaware where, masquerading as a resident, he sang the praises of the smoking ban that is ruining that state's hospitality industry. His name simultaneously appears as a big wig at something called the Smoke Free Action Network in Washington, DC which takes credit for delivering 856 letters to the New York state legislature supporting a total smoking ban. One alert resident of New York took a look at this effort and discovered the following which has since been sent to the New York legislature: Sent to ALL the New York legislators: I would like to call to your attention that this website: SmokeFree.Net is sponsoring an EZ letter writing campaign in support of the NYS smoking ban and opposing any amendments to the existing ban. The website boast of 856 letters of support however, after examining their senders list I notice that, to date there are approximately 118 NON New York state residents soliciting our legislature and over 60 individuals sending multiple letters(3 or more, some as many as 6). I am outraged at such an underhand anti-smoking ploy and feel that it should be exposed for what it is.
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June 9 - Prevention Programs And Scientific Nonsense - Anyone who reads FORCES regularly is certainly aware of our conviction that something is very rotten in the world of public health policy making. Moreover, it has come to our attention on numerous occasions that we, as members of that public for whom “interventions” are intended, are not the only ones. Many people of integrity in the world of health, education and science – and indeed, in public health, where all three of these fields intersect, are worried themselves, if not downright scandalized – about an increasingly “acceptable” lack of integrity in science, bureaucratic function creep, and an atmosphere of intimidation toward dissenting opinion. Usually, they are afraid to speak out about for fear of losing their jobs. Thus, it is always refreshing when someone from “inside the system” musters enough courage to be critical. This article, published in Policy Review Online, chronicles the hostility that met one presenter at an annual meeting of the Society for Prevention Research when she critiqued methodological flaws in the evaluation of certain programs intended to prevent substance abuse among young people. What she found was that “the response to my attempt to examine the scientific base of some widely advocated prevention programs was an ad hominem attack coupled with defensive arguments justifying the violation of basic tenets of evaluation practice in prevention research.” In her interesting exploration of why this might have occurred we are introduced to terms like “anti-science” and “post-modern researcher”. In the end, she concludes that deference to authority, not truth, is the reigning value in what has become a proudly irrational public policy culture.
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The recent release of a massive study showing no risk to nonsmokers from secondhand smoke has brought forth the vitriolic denunciations the anti-tobacco enterprise so dearly loves. The authors are pawns of Big Tobacco. Their methods are invalid. The study is a sinister plot advanced by special interests to undermine the health of the world. Long on invective and short on concrete criticism, the operatives bleat and bray to an increasingly skeptical public. Tom Utley captures the snarling panic that defines anti-tobacco approach to dissention to its self-proclaimed gospel. He notes that stripped of the adjectives and innuendo the excoriation boils down to, "I won't look at the facts and will, instead, hold my breath and turn blue." Like children, or religious fanatics, anti-tobacco is throwing a temper tantrum. Unlike ill-bred children, however, anti-tobacco can muster up a smear machine that threatens to crush all dissenters. "Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke could not plausibly cause a 30% increase in risk of coronary heart disease," they said. "It seems premature to conclude that environmental tobacco smoke causes death from coronary heart disease and lung cancer." In the present climate of opinion, that is an extraordinarily brave thing to say. It is particularly courageous of Dr. Enstrom, who works at the school of public health at California University, Los Angeles, which I imagine to be the very Kremlin of political correctness in the world capital of the phenomenon. Prof. Kabat teaches at the department of preventive medicine in the State University of the relatively civilized New York -- at least, New York was civilized, before the unspeakable Mayor Bloomberg turfed the city's smokers out of its bars and restaurants and on to the streets. Dr. Enstrom and Prof. Kabat are indeed very brave men. They have pointed out the the emperor has no clothes and the con men growing rich off of spreading secondhand smoke fears are furious and vow destruction. Too bad for anti-tobacco that each have reputations that are unsullied and that what their study reveals is true. The secondhand smoke fraud is reaching the end of the line.
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Researchers who dissent from the party line face character assassination and the termination of grants. Those who report their findings are vilified as lackeys of the tobacco industry, and accused of professional misconduct (in 1998, campaigners tried to have this newspaper censured by the Press Complaints Commission for our reports on passive smoking. They failed.). The termination of grants is pertinent to the just-released Enstrom/Kabat study that shows secondhand smoke is not hazardous. The four decade study received funding from the American Cancer Society and, during its recent stages, from the Tobacco Control Office of California's Health and Human Services. Both entities, although acknowledged anti-tobacco organizations, claim to be scrupulously fair open to scientific inquiry. As it became clear that Enstrom/Kabat were veering from anti-tobacco orthodoxy, California's Tobacco Control cut funding. It didn't find anything amiss with the methods of the researchers but a conclusion that secondhand smoke is not the deadly toxin anti-tobacco claims it to be would be highly embarrassing to an organization that exists only to eliminate smokers. Such is the value of scientific query to the prohibitionists. In reality, the conclusions reached by Dr. Enstrom and Prof. Kabat, are similar to the conclusions reached by the World Health Organization several years ago. The difference between the WHO and the two researchers is that Enstrom and Kabat are not hiding their findings that secondhand smoke is not harmful to nonsmokers, as the WHO attempted to do. For their candor and honesty, the two are being demonized. This time, however, the smears will not work.
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It's a major change, in new federal guidelines being released Wednesday, that affects people with blood pressure as low as 120 over 80 - once thought to be a good level but now considered not good enough. So what was once acceptable is now considered too high. Just like the new weight standards, a stroke of the pen has now thrust millions of healthy people with normal blood pressures into the realm of the unhealthy. And what do unhealthy people need? Well, for one thing they need drugs. For another they need to be told what to do. Lowering the blood pressure considered healthy is a boon for the pharmaceutical industry and great news for the every expanding health establishment. As with smoking and eating, it all boils down to someone getting rich off behavior control.
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Chapman was charged Monday in Lansing District Court with embezzlement, forgery and other felony counts. She is free on $50,000 bond. Her lawyer, James Bliss, declined to comment saying he was studying the allegations. - Associated Press
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How the mighty have fallen. Despite pulling off the "most important" public health initiative in history, Morales lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary and soon after found himself in hot legal water. Last month the hot water reached the boiling point when Morales was named in a 12-count federal indictment, one of which alleges that he cut in a buddy on the tobacco settlement case fees. Now the five lawyers that he hired while state attorney general to represent the state in the tobacco litigation are seeking a protective order to prevent Morales from disclosing information about the tobacco case to parties outside of the litigation. To the public this looks like the tobacco settlement lawyers are mighty fearful that Morales, sitting in the hot seat, may spill the beans about all sorts of sordid details about how Texas shook down the tobacco industry. His former comrades are quite willing for Morales to face the music, as long as they aren't included in the chorus.
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The study, laughable on its face, veered into the bizarre when Stanton Glantz, an anti-smoking activist working at the University of California, endorsed its results. Although Glantz has produced a wagon load of junk science in his career, he is a smooth operator who takes great pains to maintain the illusion that he is a scientist. Endorsing the glaringly shoddy study from Helena is a departure that is more interesting than yet another invalid study cranked out by two anti-tobacco country doctors. Among others, Jacob Sullum examined the study and found it wanting. Glantz has responded to Sullum's criticism, although not to Sullum himself. Posting to an internet site that caters to the Kool Aid drinkers in the tobacco control industry, Glantz answers him by .... you guessed it, calling Sullum a tobacco industry apologist. He also takes issue on a few quantifiable points which Sullum neatly answers.
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We are, of course, in full agreement with Mr. Gabb – except, perhaps, in tactics. Protested, Mr. Gabb?... The health Nazis couldn’t care less about the protest of those who smoke, and/or defend self-determination and freedom. To them, just the perception of health overrides anything by default, including – and especially – freedom of speech, expression and information, scientific ethics, and the liberty of individuals to do with their lives as they see fit. Never mind protesting; to change things, it takes positive action, such as civil disobedience, continuous, systematic and well-planned strikes by the interested categories (hospitality industry, tobacco industry, etc.), and individual/collective actions such as refusing to file an income tax return at the end of the year (that would get the government’s attention) – not to mention, for smokers, to really start going by the book on the job. Do I have to observe the antismoking laws, and smoke in the street like a whore? Very well… but I just happen to notice that the electric cables in this building do not exactly comply with regulations – better call the safety inspector… oh, look at that: the way the inventory is kept in this warehouse is not by the book, and maybe is even illegal… I better make an anonymous phone call to the taxman… catch the drift? And if somebody has something to say, what the hell, why should I be the only one who has to obey the law because I smoke? Having adopted the zero tolerance nonsense, we may as well use it universally – and get those who oppress us to comply to the letter with the ten of thousands of little laws that people inevitably break every day. Censorship and oppression are to be actively fought with any means available, and anything goes. We are at war, and the examples above will cause damage – and have an effect. Protesting is just for civilised people in a free environment where everybody is equal – which is certainly not the case of the health Reich and its followers. |
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"This is a case of an elected official charged with abusing the public trust," U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton said. "This indictment alleges that he violated that trust by backdating contracts, forging government records and converting campaign contributions to personal use." From coast to coast, state attorneys general feel a chill wind a' blowing over the announcement that one of the architects of the tobacco settlement is facing serious charges arising from alleged misconduct while shaking down the tobacco industry. Although Texas settled with the tobacco industry on its own, its settlement, as well as the settlements in Mississippi, Florida and Minnesota, presaged the nationwide tobacco settlement that will cost smokers over two hundred billion dollars. Morales' legal woes round out the bad karma that hit each of the politicians in these states who wrapped themselves in the tobacco settlement. Skip Humphrey, the attorney general in Minnesota who trampled innocent bystanders to gloat before TV cameras about his role in breaking the tobacco industry, came in third in his race to be governor. The anti-tobacco organization he set up is facing the possibility of being de-funded. Mississippi's attorney general, Michael Moore's political career is in the toilet despite high hopes -- and endless media attention during the early days of the tobacco shakedown -- of climbing to a higher office on the backs of corporations and the customers they serve. Only Lawton Chiles, governor of Florida and instigator of that state's tobacco industry shakedown, escaped embarrassment after leaving office and that's only because he died, prematurely, while puffing away on his exercise bike. The fate of these four grifters is indicative of the moral bankruptcy of anti-tobacco and a cheery moral object lesson for decent Americans.
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At the same time, the groups said they would support an even bigger tax increase -- half a buck per pack -- if the extra dime was set aside for anti-tobacco efforts. These desperate days are causing anti-tobacco to loose its cool. For years the goons have gone from state to state selling the lie that raising the cigarette tax induces people to quit. In reality what it does it induce them to buy their smokes out of state and maybe reduce consumption a bit. The cigarette tax is about maxed out but old-school politicians in New Jersey still think they can balance the state's budget but sticking it to the smokers once again. This time the anti-tobacco crowd is promising to oppose the tax increase unless they are given a hefty cut. Their preposterous blackmail attempt is doubly amusing since anti-tobacco is one lobbying enterprise that has lost almost all of its clout and its naked greed in New Jersey is bound to reduce anti-tobacco's influence even more. Keep begging for the bucks, show the public what you are really about. On a cultural note, please note who sponsors the online publication reporting this story. Ever wonder why there is nary a negative word about the pharmaceutical front group named the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the special interest group that lobbies for smoking bans? Wonder no longer, just look at who is paying the bills.
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Political correctness stands in sharp contrast to the traditional American value of legally respecting, not restricting, everyone's right to their personal beliefs. The beliefs may be accurate or false, virtuous or vicious, but everyone has the right to use their own judgment to arrive at their own conclusions. It's a common story. A politician pushes for a smoking ban because his mother, or grandfather or best friend was a smoker who died. The personal becomes legislation. Wendy McElroy, author, feminist and member of the FORCES Honour Committee, argues for less laws and less interference by the state into affairs best left settled by individuals.
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Surprise, surprise. The anti-smoking group was lying! It' latest concert promises to be quite an eye-opener. We link to Anti Target Market. |
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So horrible is smoking that when a brave legislator proposes a law to ban tobacco sales and tobacco smoking in his state, he can surely count on the hundreds of health groups who damn smoking daily to jump on board. Not quite. Representative Mike Grosz, Republican of North Dakota, received a very cold shoulder when he announced his bill to end the carnage by making smoking and the sale of smoking material illegal in his state. Not surprisingly, considering the greed of politicians, his bill died an overwhelming death when presented to his fellow legislators. What is scandalous is that the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, among many other so-called "health" organizations trooped to the capitol to speak vehemently against the bill. So adamant that the carnage must continue were the guardians of public health that many legislators were stunned. After years of testifying about the horrors of smoking, their refusal to embrace a plant to end tobacco addiction and disease is inexplicable. While it is true that the American Lung Association, American Heart Association, American Cancer Society make money off each cigarette sold, financial enrichment surely take a far distant place to ending the plague of tobacco. With the true nature of anti-tobacco on display in South Dakota's capitol, the people who run these health groups are revealed to have blood on their hands. They are profiting from the death, illness and disorder that smoking causes. That they want it to continue makes them far worse than the corporations that sell the stuff. |
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January 14 - Excoriating The American Lung Association - We beg to differ with the American Lung Association that Oklahoma has squandered its tobacco settlement money. Oklahoma got an "F" from the association in how it funds smoking cessation programs. This meaningless grade by an increasingly militant association ignores the fiscal crisis extant in this state and in most others. The Oklahoman gets an "A" for recognizing a shakedown when it sees it. Most of the press, so far, has ignored the American Lung Association's self-serving "report card" to the states on how they are doing in the tobacco wars. The thrust of the ALA's grading project is designed to shame to politicians into shuffling more of rapidly diminishing state funds into the pockets of well-oiled special interests groups, including the ALA. Considering the fiscal straights most states find themselves in, the ALA's campaign is a losing proposition but it is refreshing that a newspaper has the guts to point out that the pressure group is indeed militant and greedy. Where the Oklahoman falls short is its reiteration of many of the ALA's talking points. By remarking that "most everyone hates tobacco or is at least not overly fond of it", the editorialists are revealing their isolation from normal people. Most people don't even think about tobacco, recognizing smoking as a personal preference that is trivial in the scheme of things. The paper also needs to educate itself about smoking cessation products and their abysmal failure rate of 85 percent. Still, seeing the ALA beaten up in the pages of a major newspaper is refreshing and could turn out to be habit forming.
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January 8 - Whining For More Loot - But Norman Kjono, a spokesman for Forces International, a group that supports smokers' rights, said the American Lung Association is simply "arguing for their own pocketbooks" in suggesting that tobacco settlement money should go to antismoking programs. "They want the money spent on themselves and their programs, rather than other public uses," he said. Although economic bad times plague each state in the union, the legislators must also endure a plague of locusts in the form of tobacco control operatives screeching for money. The American Lung Association is particularly egregious in its demands that its bank account be filled at the expense of every taxpayer in the United States. It's gimmick is to issue report cards to each state rating its commitment to anti-tobacco policies. Needless to say all states are failing. The ALA is especially angered that the tobacco settlement, a $200-billion plus shakedown of America's smokers is plugging states' deficits rather than enriching anti-tobacco special interests. It's press releases imply that the settlement was to be used to fund anti-smoking programs. Not true. The settlement money, ill-gotten booty though it is, can be spent anyway the states see fit. Not surprisingly all states consider wasting that money on ridiculous television anti-smoking ads and expensive programs is not going to cut it with voters. Economic and political reality has hit the tobacco control industry and it isn't happy. |
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One who disagrees with the new law is the ubiquitous Garfield Mahood, executive director of the Non-Smokers' Rights Association who veered wildly from anti-tobacco's approved talking points to a semblance of honesty. Noting that penalizing smoking inadvertently makes the practice more attractive to rebellious teenagers, Mahood let loose with a howler: "The tobacco industry likes to position tobacco use as adult behaviour. The cigarette becomes the badge that signals entry into adulthood. Nova Scotia is playing right into the tobacco industry's trap." So in the wild and crazy anti-corporate fog in which Mahood lives, the tobacco industry is responsible for a law that cracks down on teenage smokers. Mahood doesn't care if every teenager took up smoking, as long as the smokes don't come from Big Tobacco. As a shill for pharmaceutical nicotine, Mahood makes a very good living indeed reviling the companies that make and sell the real stuff that people enjoy.
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The supposed link between abortion and breast cancer came from a series of studies that did show an association, higher, in fact, than the association between secondhand smoke and lung cancer, although both "risks" bordered on statistical insignificance. At the time keen observers noted that because abortion rights are sacred, the studies linking it to breast cancer had to be ruthlessly buried while the even more tenuous association between secondhand smoke and lung cancer had to be promoted as "fact" to further the prohibitionist agenda. Waxman, of course, is one of the more strident politicians who endorses the myth of secondhand smoke as a serious health hazard. For him to complain about the present administration using science for ideological reasons, as he and his patrons have done for a decade, is the height of hypocrisy.
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Although few would disagree that actual binge drinking is to be avoided as a habit, the hysterics in Australia have been conned by prohibitionist interests in the United States who released the report solely to curb advertising and grease the wheels to bring alcohol hysteria back to the font scenes of social control. Too bad the Australian press swallows the junk science behind the report lock stock and barrel. In the United States the ink was scarcely dry on the researchers' press releases when actual researchers pointed out severe problems with the conclusions the prohibitionists had drawn. Instead of an epidemic of youthful binge drinking, the bebunkers uncovered glaring errors in the methodology used by the anti-alcohol crowd. Since alcohol is still widely advertised in newspapers and on the radio and television, even the New York Times joined the chorus crying foul. For now, in the United States at least, the blatant dishonesty that was used to take down the tobacco industry will not be allowed to shakedown the alcohol industry. Expect more anti-drinking scares, however, with fuzzier conclusions and subtler data manipulations.
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JUDGE CURBS EPA'S WRETCHED EXCESS - May 4, 2001 - In a decision that adds to the growing momentum to rein in the Environmental Protection Agency, a federal judge issued a blistering rebuff to the agency's authority to conduct an endless investigation into an alleged health hazard. The ruling culminates a 20 year EPA investigation of a man's property in the Chicago suburbs. Despite the lack of evidence and the judge's ruling, the EPA "believes" that in the midst of all the junk there must be a toxic time bomb ready to explode. For "believes" substitute "feels" and the EPA's position is clear: "We will test and retest until the results we want are realized no matter what it takes" The growing examples of abuse accumulating on the EPA's doorstep is a clarion call that this out-of-control agency needs a thorough Congressional investigation and an intense scrubbing from top to bottom. |
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EPA CITED FOR LAX OVERSIGHT PROCEDURES - May 1, 2001 - The General Accounting Office slammed the Environmental Protection Agency for its inadequate review process regarding the billions of dollars the agency passes out to nonprofit grantees. Senator Kit Bond wrote a letter to the agency urging that the EPA Administrator alter the management policies established during the Clinton Administration where abuses in the grant process ran rampant. Under Carol Browner, former EPA Administrator appointed by Bill Clinton, grantees used grant funds for improper purposes such as illegal lobbying and legal expenses. With Bill Clinton, Carol Browner and her mentor, Al Gore, out of power, the abuses of the Environmental Protection Agency are coming to light and will be addressed. A 50 percent cut in its funding would solve most of its problems. |
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FORMER EPA HEAD ERASES THE EVIDENCE - April 30, 2001 - Despite an order by a US district judge, a contractor erased the computer storage devices of former EPA administrator Carol Browner. The destruction occurred on the last day of the Clinton Administration and one day after Judge Lamberth ordered the agency to preserve all records relating to a lawsuit filed by the Landmark Legal Foundation. Landmark seeks documents relating to the involvement of outside groups in regulatory actions taken by the EPA. Under Carol Browner, the EPA was a tool of the special interests and a close examination of its internal records is long overdue. The destruction of incriminating records is a part and parcel of the EPA's records of disinformation. |
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AUSTRALIA: SURGERY BAN ON SMOKERS - February 11, 2001 - Doctors are refusing smokers potentially life-saving surgery until they quit their habit. Physicians and surgeons at Melbourne's top hospitals told the Herald Sun they are denying smokers elective treatment such as lung and heart transplants, lung reduction surgery, artery by-passes and coronary artery grafts. Alfred Hospital respiratory physician Associate Professor Greg Snell said reasons for the ban were medical and moral… "It is within our mandate to ration services and smoking is one way to define the patient population. "It is common practice to not do elective surgery, and certainly some lung operations, on people who smoke." SMOKER DIES AFTER DOCTORS REFUSE TO TREAT HIM - February 11, 2001 - ' The man, 56, is thought to be the first person to die since Australian doctors decided to take a stand on smokers and their treatment which, critics say, borders on “moral fascism”. Some doctors have refused to perform transplants and other life-saving operations on smokers on "medical and moral" grounds.' FORCES Editorial - FUTURE FORWARD - MEDICAL CARE AS A PRIVILEGE OF THE OBEDIENT AND VIRTUOUS - February 11, 2001 - "Smokers' rights - c'mon, isn't that kind of a trivial sort of issue in the great scheme of things?" That's a question that we get from time to time, but FORCES has always had a profound understanding of the dangers to a liberal society that are posed by entities that seek the collective goal of a "better, more efficient and productive society for all" by means of controlling the behaviour of individuals, and using fear and coercion to enforce conformity. Those potential dangers are becoming present reality. - This is not the first killing of smokers by the mafia in white coats. It has happened before in England. While the old article is no longer on line, click on the header to see excerpts of it. "In examining the additive effects of covariates, patients who smoked but quit more than 5 yr before transplantation appeared to have better outcomes than patients who had never smoked. The reason for this is unclear. This effect was independent of other, major determinants of graft survival posttransplant. We might speculate that patients who were able to quit smoking were also patients who had other attributes that led to improved survival (!), attributes that were not taken into account in the multivariate analysis. For example, patients who were able to quit smoking may have been more adherent to medications (on what grounds are these cons speculating?). It is also possible that patients who were able to quit smoking adopted other lifestyles and habits that improved their survival after transplantation. In any case, this result should be interpreted with caution…" Actually, the cons have said that they have no clue, but look at how neatly the antismoking seed is implanted - and so is the justification to deny transplant, and let the smoker die. |
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 Explosive
report! - PHARMACEUTICAL MULTINATIONALS:
BUYING GOVERNMENTS, SELLING ANTISMOKING - For the first time ever in the
history of the disgusting antismoking saga, FORCES publishes a complete list of names,
dates, organisations and sums paid by just ONE of the pharmaceutical giants, Johnson &
Johnson. Through its philanthropic organisation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the
tentacles of this super giant control or influence all the vital power centres in America
and, directly or indirectly, in the West. You will be surprised to see who is on the
payroll: trusted, credible faces you often see on television, people on the board of
directors of your favourite newspaper, or perhaps that famous researcher... maybe even
someone at the Surgeon General office, or the head of that "disinterested" group
trying so hard to get you to quit smoking - and kick you out in the cold if you have a
puff - to "protect," of course, the non smokers from non-existing dangers. |
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Dr. Koop, one of the fathers of the antismoking cartel - SUED FOR STOCK VIOLATIONS DR. KOOP.CON. Dr. Koop, one of the fathers of the antitobacco cartel, "America’s family doctor", sworn enemy of smokers, heavy spreader of FALSE information about tobacco and disease. The stocks of his enterprise are plummeting. Click here to see the chart. But this is not all. The American media, so alert when it comes to divulge the last scientific fraud about the dangers of smoking, seems to keep really quiet about this news. |
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