December 17, 2002 – When one says that frauds and antismoking campaigns are financed by (and at the service of) pharmaceutical conglomerates many do not believe it – especially those who are already “converted” to healthist “doctrines”, or at any rate benefit from the passive smoke fraud to get rid of smokers. Some even say:  “… And why? The pharmaceutical industry loves smoking, because it causes many cancers, and they sell the therapies!” -- barely hiding their blind contempt for those who enjoy the lovely habit of smoking.

The pharmaceutical industry loves smoking indeed – but not because it “causes” cancers (and, by the way, in spite of all superstitions, not even one can be proven to be caused exclusively by smoking – or if caused by smoking at all; two thirds of the cancers occur in non smokers). Big Pharma loves smokers because they are its new business horizon, delivered up with the force of laws and by a medical establishment which is as powerful as it is dishonest.

Thanks to the constant work of our researchers, the solid connections between antismoking campaigns and Big Pharma’s marketing become more and more evident every day. The investment by pharmaceutical multinationals in statistical frauds is then picked up by the ministries of health of various countries, and those ministries turn into veritable promotional centres for pharma products, pushing health frauds and products from private companies with public money. It this the “Third Way” that President Clinton proposed – the new “cooperation” between public and private

It is not a coincidence that the pharmaceutical giants pay antismoking activists all over the world to instigate hysteria and mass hatred against smokers. The goal of this marketing campaign, which involves even well-known names of international medicine, is quite clear: the smoker, frightened by the disinformation, tormented even by his kids (who get brainwashed in school), thrown out from public places and workplaces – and finally hated by society – tries to quit to conform. But, since he is told he is an “addict”, he must turn to the help of his doctor, who either sends him to a quit-smoking centre or prescribes the “therapy” directly, depending on the business arrangements made with Big Pharma. With public money, therefore, a private enterprise that is based on persecution is promoted – a persecution that goes after the very segment of the public that pays for that kind of marketing,  using “public health” to induce the people to change their behaviour through using false and biased information, to satisfy the financial needs of private colossuses.

This is the chilling reality of the Fraud of the Century, and documentation from two major pharmaceutical manufacturers corroborates the mountain of evidence (not the statistical one!...) we are accumulating.

The Annual Report 2001 of Pharmacia Corporation [if the link does not work, click here] (manufacturer of quit-smoking product Nicorette), tells us at pages 9, 24 and 26:

The Annual Report 2001 of Glaxo Smith Kline  [if the link does not work, click here]  (manufacturer of the quit-smoking product Zyban, the antismoking pill), tells us what follows.

At page 10 identifies the competition:

This point is picked up at page 61 of the report (see below).

At page 46:

At page 49, the GSK annual Report shows the antismoking pill sales for 2001: 337 million pounds, about 440 million US dollars – a decrease next to the 357 million pounds of the year before (over 475 million dollars), probably due to the competition of other products, and because of the negative publicity for the chain of heart attacks deaths of smoking “patients” clearly connected with the use of this “medicine” which, like its competition, has a failure rate of 85%. That means that the “patient” will go back to smoking, and then back to the smoking “cessation” products and so on, in an endless, cruel cycle between guilt, fear and pleasure, feeding three interested parties: the pharmaceutical industry, the tobacco industry and the state – and, to add insult to injury, he will be the victim of endless intimidation, marginalisation, and social discrimination.

At page 58:

At page 61:

Just two of the main manufacturers of “cessation therapies”, therefore, have sold about 670 million US dollars in those products in one year – without counting the largest of all, Johnson & Johnson, a very generous financer (thought its philanthropic arm, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) of antismoking “activists” and “studies”, to the tune of over one billion dollars in the last ten years and just in one nation, the USA.

It does not take a statistical expert to see the glaring correlation between the explosion of antismoking campaigns by activists and “public health” and the expansion of the interests of pharmaceutical multinationals. Once again, unsettling questions that everyone should ask come to mind:

• Even in the totally unproven hypothesis that tobacco is as lethal as we hear, do we accept that the state be “in bed” with the multinationals, using public money to promote their agendas?
• There has been great trumpeting and scandal about the tobacco lobbies; how come there is silence about antismoking tobacco lobbies?
• Is it a coincidence that the toughening of antismoking positions in various governments occur when the minister of health is a renowned doctor, whose connections with Big Pharma are as inevitable as they are intuitive to understand?
• What logical reason can one bring to make us believe that the minister of health may be less corrupt and susceptible to corporate interests than other ministries? Are we really that naïve, or it is just convenient for us to be so, because we hate smoking since we have been brainwashed against it?

Given the evidence of facts from this and other documentation, there can be only one answer: we are contemptuous of corruption when it involves things that we consider “immoral” (or that, at any rate, do not suit us); but we close an eye (or both) on the corruption that pushes “moral” agendas, or things that somehow suit us. Therefore, we have accepted corruption as a licit means to reach our goals – even when that corruption becomes the system. But, perhaps, it is better not to ask such questions, isn’t it -- because the answers would be more unsettling than the questions themselves.

Instead, it is much better to close eyes and ears (and especially the mind), and to continue to repeat and scream endlessly that “smoking kills”. Believe that – it is the word of the Therapeutic State.

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[1] In the same time period, stiff antismoking laws have been proposed (and applied) in Japan, traditionally a country very tolerant of smoking. It has been forbidden to smoke in the streets, and severe crackdowns are implemented, turned to dramatically curb the enjoyment of tobacco, while groups are spreading the usual disinformation on smoking and health, and especially the passive smoke fraud. [back to text]

[2] In Canada, the ferocious antismoking campaign has increased immensely, and fuelled with 480 million public Canadian dollars (about  360 million US) in just one year by the ministry of health for a “total war” against smokers; the removal of parental authority of smokers who do not submit to the propaganda has been repeatedly proposed. The passive smoke fraud propaganda has increased geometrically, while local bans are passed thanks to the activation of local health units. In the meantime, non official rumours  suggest that the Canadian Supreme Court is preparing to hear a case in February 2003 that would lead, almost inevitably, to the de-legalisation of tobacco, ensuring the virtual monopoly of nicotine to the pharmaceutical industry. [back to the text]

[3] The World Health Organisation is about to close an international treaty that sanctions the persecution of smokers at the world level, and the prohibition of tobacco advertisement on a planetary scale. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) of Lyon has picked up the methodology that earned to the US Environmental Protection Agency the decision of a US federal court, which demonstrated conclusively the statistical fraud about passive smoke (that decision has been conveniently eliminated very recently by the 4^th appeal court not by reversing it, but by eliminating the entire legal procedure). By positioning the passive smoke methodological fraud on “international waters”, and by increasing the (at any rate insignificant) risk increment from 19% to 30%, the WHO-IARC tandem justifies and instigates smoking prohibitions. Finally, we are looking at a tremendous increase in the push to forbid smoking in public almost in every country in the world, in perfect sync with the promotion of pharmaceutical smoking cessation products at a global level. [back to the text] - [back to the text about page 63]

[4] Recently, we have seen  a tremendous toughening of antismoking campaigns in the UK. Great Britain has forbidden tobacco advertisement, and smoking prohibition in public is strongly promoted by antismoking organisations and by collaborationist media. [back to the text]

[5] No more than three months ago, French “public health”  launched a “red alert” on the dangers of active and passive smoking, even using violent TV advertisement that portrays the last instant of life of a lung cancer patient, to emotionally associate the scientifically unproven “causality” between smoking and lung cancer, and to instil fear in smokers so that they quit. Although refuted by other countries, this approach only indicates that the marketing of pharmaceutical products and antismoking disinformation is finely tuned to different cultures, and implemented with different means by the local ministries of health using public money; but the goal is the same all over. [back to the text]

[6] In the same time period, the antismoking campaign message gets pounded home even more all over Europe. Two months later Zyban was launched in Italy and almost simultaneously the (then) minister of “health” Veronesi proposes a total ban of smoking in public, a policy initiative now continued by his successor, Girolamo Sirchia. Again, banning public smoking is an essential  move to induce smokers to quit. Most ministries of “health”, together with the WHO, are great promoters of smoking cessation products – complete with toll-free numbers, advertisements, and quit-smoking “specialists” hired by the state to push a selection of pharmaceutical products. But the health consequences of those products -- and their 85% failure rate -- are either underplayed, or kept totally hidden. For example, two months after the introduction of Zyban in Italy and UK, a mainstream Italian news broadcast reported the long chain of deaths following the use of Zyban  – deaths that occurred within 10 days from the first administration of the drug. After that news, however, the information was “abandoned”, and nothing has been known thereinafter. A similar situation exists in other countries. Ministries of “health”, antismoking centres, and doctors continue to prescribe this dangerous drug, while it seems quite obvious that the state does not wish to endanger the immense interests of Big Pharma, but it continues to state that “smokers are at risk of cardiovascular disease”  - although the only evidence is statistical, and statistically insignificant to boot (risk increase: 70%; the level of risk increase to reach statistical significance for multifactorial disease such as cardiovascular ones – 300+ co-factors – is 200 - 300%). In this way, the heart attacks possibly caused by antismoking drugs are easily dissimulated, since “smokers are at risk anyway”. So far, that has been the position of Big Pharma in almost every instance of death after the assumption of quit-smoking drugs.