FORCES Forum
THE LETTERS OF DR. STOW ON TOBACCO AND ALCOHOLDr. Stow addresses the "problem" of youth smoking when compared to the much larger and immediate problem of alcohol abuse. Because of the documentation and the arguments produced, these letters are compelling. After reading these letters, we wonder why the health establishment -- so eager to portray tobacco as the scourge of the century -- does not go back to its mandate, and considers its priorities from the health -- as opposed to political -- point of view.
The Honorable John Linder Thank you for your letter of August 6 regarding your position on attempts by some in Congress to raise cigarette taxes markedly and by other lawmakers to bankrupt the tobacco industry and thus end tobacco use in the U.S. entirely. Please consider sharing the attached correspondence written this date to our nation's new surgeon general, Dr. David Satcher, and to others regarding the irrational, one-sided "War on Tobacco" with Rep. Deborah Pryce (R-OH) who, to my understanding, is shaping the House's version of tobacco legislation aimed at reducing the problem of smoking among school-age youth. To facilitate widespread dissemination of my views regarding the Clinton administration's narrow and misleading "War on Tobacco," I will seek having the letters provided here OPENLY POSTED ON THE INTERNET FOR PUBLIC READING. I support efforts to curtail youth smoking as have been introduced in the 105th Congress by Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA) -- i.e., H.R. 2034 -- which would quite reasonably address the problem of teen smoking without raising taxes on tobacco products. Lastly, since Congress -- and the nation's public health leadership -- do not apparently want to ban alcohol advertising on TV and radio broadcasts in the U.S., I urge you introduce legislation to end the funding of CDC's Office on Smoking and Health. Since CDC's leadership does not deem it fit to also have an Office on Drinking and Health, and utilizes the Office on Smoking and Health chiefly as an anti-smoking public relations machine to support the American Medical Association's goal to ban tobacco use entirely in the U.S.; I submit that the time has arrived to terminate that extremely unfair use of my tax money aimed, for the most part, in ending the livelihood of those in our nation whom grow tobacco or otherwise feed their children by working in the tobacco industry's manufacturing plants, both within Georgia and in other states in the U.S. as well.
United States House of Representatives August 17, 1998 addendum: These comments are those of a retired public health dentist who has seen far more heartache and misery among other Americans stem from the use of alcoholic beverages than result from tobacco use. While I gave up smoking ten years ago and hold absolutely no financial interests in the tobacco industry whatsoever, I deem the Clinton administration's "War on Tobacco" -- and its equally irrational "War on Drugs" no less -- to be the most profound folly to occur at the direction of the White House since the insane "Vietnam War" which slaughtered more than 57,000 innocent American youth, and many more youthful Asian human beings, chiefly to make one egomaniac in Washington, DC, feel godlike and omnipotent. Since our nation's politicians widely recognize that many Americans desire to have the freedom to use alcoholic beverages, and should know that Prohibition in the 1920s and early 1930s was a "grand experiment" that failed (benefiting mostly criminals such as Al Capone and lawmen employed to curtail their illicit activities, too); I find it amazing that some politicians desire to enact what might be called "Prohibition II" -- i.e., the banishment of tobacco products -- and other politicians seek to deny those who find a health benefit from the use of marijuana in dealing with nausea from AIDS or cancer chemotherapy, or in reducing the effects of glaucoma as well, from using a natural substance that a significant number of human beings perceive as useful. If you folks in Washington, DC, want to have a war to rally people around, why not proclaim a "War on Hypocrisy" or a "War on Unfair Legislation" -- or both -- and let Americans who want to smoke either tobacco or marijuana do so, sir? Since neither of these substances wreck family harmony nor result in child neglect and abuse to the extent that beer, the King of Drugs, and other alcoholic beverages quite often do in our society -- even former drug-czar William Bennett has identified ethyl alcohol as the leading mood-altering substance responsible for the destruction of family stability and the concomitant growth of moral poverty and crime in our nation (see Bennett's 1996 book, BODY COUNT, and give attention to his remarks in the chapter entitled "The Root Cause of Crime: Moral Poverty" beginning on page 18) -- why not grant to both tobacco and marijuana users the same rights and freedoms granted to folks who desire to drink booze? When a man is sentenced to prison for 60 to 80 years for merely growing marijuana, and a vicious rapist or murderer in our society is often given a prison sentence of only 20 years or so; I think that our country's laws have become extremely unjust, sir. attachments cc: others
Surgeon General David Satcher Dear Dr. Satcher: Please forward the enclosed letter this date, along with attachments provided, to Dr. Jeffrey Koplan as a courtesy, will you? You were quoted by science writer Jane Ellen Stevens in her article, "Treating Violence as an Epidemic" (published in MIT's Technology Review: Aug/Sept 1994 issue) as stating:
Because the use of alcohol is a factor linked with violent behavior more than any other factor, and since the beliefs of both pre-school-age and school-age children are shaped, to no small extent, by what they see repeatedly on television broadcasts; it seems reasonable to me that alcohol advertising on radio and television broadcasts should be banned by law just as Congress saw fit in 1971 to ban cigarette promotions on such broadcasts to help reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality in our nation if our country's public health officials and lawmakers, in truth, do sincerely care about the lives and well-being of our society's youth. But if our nation's public health officials and lawmakers do not wish to deal with alcohol's widespread harmfulness using the same yardstick as they use in attacking tobacco's harmfulness which causes mortality largely in the elderly in our society, then I submit that they ought to abandon this inconsistent, one-sided crusade to ban tobacco use in the United States, sir. In case some haven't noticed, obviously inconsistent and irrational public health policies as those currently pursued by the Clinton administration tend to make public health officials appear as mere fools or worse, I suggest. Thank you for your thoughtful attention once again, sir.
enclosure cc: others
Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, Director
The attached copies of correspondence may be of some interest to you when, or before, you assume your duties as CDC's director in October. While the American Medical Association's quest to "force the removal of this scourge (of tobacco use) from our nation and by so doing set an example for the world"(1) is not without some merit, I wish to point out the following well-supported facts:
If more children in a society are dying before reaching adulthood due to the use of product X than any other product sold in the marketplace, and the use of another product, call it product Y, causes death chiefly among that same society's elderly members, should product X be largely ignored by responsible public health officials while they focus most of their and the public's attention on product Y in a markedly inconsistent manner? Product X, of course, is beverage alcohol -- the use of which, directly or otherwise, constitutes the number-one killer of American youth as well as one of the leading causes of mental retardation in the Western world -- while product Y is tobacco: a so-called "scourge" which produces mortality chiefly among Americans 65 years of age and those much older when death itself is not an unnatural event at all, sir. And while extending the life span of older Americans is commendable to some extent, I firmly believe that the lives of my grandchildren and those lives of other young Americans are equally as important and well worth protecting as are the largely-spent lives of older Americans who, such as myself, have already lived quite a full life.
Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, Director The claims made in this letter are supported by published U.S. Public Health Service mortality data by age groups and other reports in the medical literature: please see the attached copy of my letter this date to Jim Wooten, the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal, for specific citations. Sadly, many of today's CDC personnel have seemingly forgotten what the acronym YPLL means anymore, or perhaps now view our society's youth as second-class citizens not really deserving of their time and concern. In short, our nation's public health policies at this time are markedly inconsistent and, as far as I am concerned, clearly dishonest as well. If our nation's public health officials are unwilling to focus as much attention on alcohol's wider and more costly harmfulness to the lives of Americans as these same officials obviously seem willing to repeatedly direct to the matter of tobacco's harmfulness, I submit that the "War on Tobacco" be abandoned as the narrow, less-purposeful and dishonest public health crusade that it is in truth, sir. There is far more to the science of epidemiology, I suggest, than merely counting dead bodies in a simplistic manner. And if our nation's health officials cannot understand the greater value to our society that children and young adults actually constitute, then I can only suggest to you that such officials woefully lack wisdom concerning the fundamental human struggle to survive as an animal species. And I thought that you should be openly so informed, Dr. Koplan. Thank you for your attention once again.
Reference: ---------- 1. An editorial, "The Brown and Williamson Documents: Where Do We Go From Here?": Journal of the American Medical Association. July 19, 1995, 274(3):256-258. attachments cc: Surgeon General David Satcher, U.S. Public Health Service Claire V. Broome, MD, Acting Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention William H. Foege, MD, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University others
Claire V. Broome, MD, Acting Director
Dear Dr. Broome; I would like to point out that while the focus of chiefly prolonging the life span of our society's elderly by reducing tobacco use is not without some merit, CDC's focus on the health and well-being of our nation's children and young adults should not take a lower, far-less-visible priority as seems clearly to be the case today. This thesis is presented in greater detail in my comments this date to Jim Wooten, the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Journal; please see the attached copy of my letter to Mr. Wooten. While Mr. Wooten may not be a health expert in your eyes, I deem his suggestion that CDC's leadership should focus its primary attention on preventing morbidity and death in our society as caused by viruses, bacteria and other pathogenic agents, rather than wasting the taxpayers' money restating obvious economic facts regarding the price of cigarettes, to be responsible and appropriate. For example, less than an hour's time on the internet last night revealed that:
If the highest attack rates from E. coli infection do indeed occur in children as Dr. Wolfe has stated in the first quoted statement above, and if foodborne diseases are somewhere around 300-350 times more prevalent than previously reported as the World
Claire V. Broome, MD, Acting Director Health Organization itself reported last year; perhaps Mr. Wooten is a much better, far more insightful epidemiologist than you are despite his lack of medical training and related certification. Further, if you insist that tobacco use incurs $100 billion in annual costs, I submit once again that you should responsibly also inform Americans that several studies also show that alcoholic beverage use in the United States results in costs in the neighborhood of $300 billion annually due to alcohol's frequent association with violence and child abuse. There is also the matter of irreversible mental retardation and other birth defects which stem from the use of ethyl alcohol when used by women in our society during pregnancy, but CDC is apparently too busy with its narrow focus on tobacco use to care very much about preventing authentic pediatric disease anymore.... Thank you for your attention once again.
References: -----------
attachments cc: Surgeon General David Satcher, U.S. Public Health Service Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention William H. Foege, MD, Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University others
Jim Wooten, Editorial Page Editor Re: "To avoid poverty, marry the baby's father" Your column, The Atlanta Journal, August 14, 1998 Dear Mr. Wooten: I agree wholeheartedly that our society -- government policies, media entertainment, and religious teachings alike -- ought to widely support the concept of marriage. But preserving family stability ought to be deemed as important as well, I suggest. Unlike the use of alcoholic beverages in our society, tobacco use is very seldom -- if ever -- associated with family disharmony and violence. Further, since 40 to 160 children in our society die before reaching adulthood due to alcohol-related causes for each youngster killed from tobacco use -- this fact is supported by published U.S. Public Health Service mortality data by age groups(1) -- I submit that it is profoundly clear that the Clinton administration's absurd premise that youth smoking is a "pediatric disease" is a deceitful one; particularly in view of the fact that the majority of this nation's tobacco-related deaths are confined to Americans 65 years of age or older.(1,2) Although Dr. Claire V. Broome, CDC's acting chief, may state that "there is no single more important strategy to prevent death and disease and improve the quality of life of all Americans than to reduce the use of tobacco in this country," I contend that her premise is erroneous for the following reasons:
|
|
|